[inquiry]

The bidding goes...

West North East South

 -     Pass  Pass  1♦
 Pass  1♥    1♠    2♠
 Dbl   2NT   Pass  5♥

You are to answer what your partner's 5♥ bid means.

Bonus, based upon your answer, you may want to say what you bid with the following hand.

---

[Flame]

Since 3H is clearly GF and asking partner to cue bid, i see no point in playing 5h as a control asking of any suit. It could be asking or showing good hearts, but i voted for the asking to bid on a maximum hand. Anyway i would never bid 5H because for me the bridge table is not the place to test your partner, if we didnt discuss a bid i dont make it.

[EricK]

Can we have some system information?

eg. Do we know what the 2♠ bid showed?

Eric

[flytoox]

My personal opinion, world class player will not make such bid:) He will do it slowly to let pd to know what is goign on, he will not let pd to make a headache guess.

[the hog]

A
Axxx
AKxxxx
Ax

[Free]

This is something I call mini-Josephine: it asks partner to bid small slam with 2 tophonours and grand slam with 3 top honours. I don't see any other sensible meaning.

Since it has a specific meaning, I'll just bid 6♥...

[flytoox]

The_Hog, on Nov 6 2004, 12:20 PM, said:

A
Axxx
AKxxxx
Ax

Ron, with this hand, Pd would bid 3S, showing shape and good H raise. 2S should show more like a balance raise, like 5422.

Anyway, my point is that try not to test pd whenever possible. Here pd jump from 2N to 5H, that takes so much space which he could use to explore the slam possiblity. That is why I say a world class pd shoudl not use such bid.

[inquiry]

EricK, on Nov 6 2004, 05:42 AM, said:

Can we have some system information?

eg. Do we know what the 2♠ bid showed?

Eric

We are kibitzing.. the pair is playing a 2/1 GF... as kibitzers we can not ask what 2♠ bid means. The question is what do you think a world class bidder would mean if they bid this way. To fly, all four players as the table where this bid occurred had gold stars....but then, not all gold stars are truly world class i guess.

ben

[pclayton]

I'm not comfortable labeling these problems as "find the world-class call / play".

This seems to indicate (to me anyway) that world-class players would have a preponderous of support for a certain action. My experience that this is not the case; I think a US world class player may have an opinion about this call, different than a Pole, different still from anItalian.

I think by definition here, the posters aren't in any position to determine what a world class play or bid is. We can call it a 'well-reasoned' bid or even an 'expert' bid. But to characterize something as 'world class' is beyond our qualifications. If Zia, Michael, Jeff, Eric, Bob and Norby checked into our forums, then we could get some validations on what is 'world-class'.

Having said that, my years of reading the Bridge World tell me that 5♥ asks for trump control. Pard has a long strong diamond suit and a few hearts, but the hand was unsuitable for a 2♣ opening. void, Jxxx, AKQxxxx, AK sounds about right. I suppose its close between 6♦ and 6♥, since I'm worried about a ruff at T1.

[whereagles]

There is no "correct" meaning to the bid, though practice usually consagrates a meaning or two. In this case, I think 5H asks either good trumps or spade control. Since opener could use blackwood to find out about trumps, it seems better to use this as bid 5/6/7 with the corresponding spade control.

[flytoox]

my unwilling guess, 5H is asking about trump quality.

[bearmum]

I voted for "bid slam in H if you have a really good H suit --- as to be honest I can't see the reason for such a big jump (UNLESS it's asking quality of ♥)-- after the 2♠ cue I presume the 2NT showed ONE stopper in ♠

As to my bid I PASS 5♥

[LH2650]

Need a "None of the above" poll option. I think he is looking for this hand - good hearts plus one trick. The club K would be just as good as the spade K. By the way, I would have bid 3D instead of 2S.

Good hearts could have been determined by RKCB. Controls could have been found by bidding 3H instead of 5H.

[jdulmage]

Free, on Nov 6 2004, 08:09 AM, said:

This is something I call mini-Josephine: it asks partner to bid small slam with 2 tophonours and grand slam with 3 top honours. I don't see any other sensible meaning.

Since it has a specific meaning, I'll just bid 6♥...

I would have to agree with you on this one.

5♥ is clearly one of those (choose a slam) hands. It can't be anything else.

[whereagles]

Actually, this seems to be the kind of problem that you put to 100 world class players and get (at least) 50 different answers, LOL.

[bearmum]

LH2650, on Nov 7 2004, 05:47 PM, said:

Need a "None of the above" poll option.  I think he is looking for this hand - good hearts plus one trick.  The club K would be just as good as the spade K.  By the way, I would have bid 3D instead of 2S.

Good hearts could have been determined by RKCB.  Controls could have been found by bidding 3H instead of 5H.

I think "none of the above" is a really good idea BUT we were asked which answer was a "world class" bid (and I did assume that the bidders were indeed "world class" and so 5♥ was a good bid )
RKCB only asks what Key cards in ♥ held [not length of the suit -the way I have played it for about 20 years ] -- so I keep my original answer -- "BID 6♥ WITH A good (and presumably LONG) ♥ suit

[the hog]

flytoox, on Nov 7 2004, 02:08 AM, said:

The_Hog, on Nov 6 2004, 12:20 PM, said:

A
Axxx
AKxxxx
Ax

Ron, with this hand, Pd would bid 3S, showing shape and good H raise. 2S should show more like a balance raise, like 5422.

Anyway, my point is that try not to test pd whenever possible. Here pd jump from 2N to 5H, that takes so much space which he could use to explore the slam possiblity. That is why I say a world class pd shoudl not use such bid.

Strongly disagree.

[Flame]

The right answer is that 5H depend on the other bids in the system, if the system allow control checking the 5H wont be asking about controls, if the system allow trump quolity checking then it wont be about trumps either.

[cherdano]

As most other people, I think it should ask about trump quality. Unlike others, I don't think this is redundant with RKCB, since opener may have a void:
♠AK ♥JTxx ♦AKQxxxx ♣-.
Exclusion KCB with 5♣ won't help you here, since you don't know what to do over partner's 5♦ answer.

Since this is a world class partnership, I am sure they can establish hearts as trump on a low level and find out about a spade control below 4♥.

[Chamaco]

To my knowledge, there are at least 3 approaches to the 5-of a major bid:

1) invites small slam if pard has 2 of top 3 trump honors
2) invites slam if pard has a control in a critical suit.
This is usually opps suit (especially after they preempted or opened a weak 2)

3) In Gitelman style, it is "Lackwood", asking pard to bd small slam with 2nd round control in the LTTC suit or to respond keycards if holding 1st rnd control (and to pass without conrols in LTTC suit)

... and I am sure there must be many more I am unaware of :-)


Now, as far as I know, common is the combined use of 1) (with silent opps) and 2) (with opps bidding their suit), whereas 3) seems far from standard.

---------------------------------------

In my opinion, in this sequence, trump quality can be checked with RKCB, possibly preceded by trump agreements at 3 level via 3H (we are in a GF).

cherdano said:

As most other people, I think it should ask about trump quality. Unlike others, I don't think this is redundant with RKCB, since opener may have a void:
♠AK ♥JTxx ♦AKQxxxx ♣-.
Exclusion KCB with 5♣ won't help you here, since you don't know what to do over partner's 5♦ answer.

I disagree with Cherdano here.

1) it is unlikely that we hold AK in opps overcalled suit, and pard has bid 2NT showing stoppers... that would mean they have overcalled on an empty suit in the sandwhich seat, that wd be possible in direct seat, but not likely from a gold star in the sandwich seat.

2) The 5 diamonds bid cannot come from 0 keycards (excluding clubs !! we have 2 keycards, what does pard hold ??), slam is certainly on, now the only doubt is about whether it is a grand or not, in any case I bid 6H (and please note that if we are missing a grand here, we would also miss it by using 5H as invitational with bad trumps).

Therefore, exclusion keycards WOULD be useful in this sequence, and on the other hand RKCB can take care of the trump suit issue.

I think 5H should be asking for a control in a critical suit: without the 2NT bid, such suit should be clearly spades.

Since the 2NT bid not necessarily comes from Ax(x) or Kx(x) holding, I am going to assume 5H asks for the spade control.