Henry Lockwood wrote:
> Hi all
>
> Last night I was in the unusual situation of holding:
>
> AKJxxxx
> Q
> -
> KTxxx
>
> Partner, in second seat, opened 1NT (12-14). RHO passed, and I
> started with a transfer to S. Partner completed the transfer, and I
> rebid 3C (game-forcing with slam interest). Happy so far?
>
> What are the best continuations from this point? Obviously, on this
> hand I want to know about aces; if partner has the two relevant aces I
> want to know about the SQ to bid the grand. On other hands e.g. KQxxx/
> AK/x/KQxxx I'm still considering slam, and still interested in aces,
> but I also want to know which of my suits partner prefers.
>
> It seems to me that partner should bid S without controls, and should
> cue-bid otherwise. Should we enter a control-showing auction even
> though we're not necessarily certain which suit to play?
> Alternatively, how can we carry on without risking getting too high?
>
> -----------
>
> On the night, the auction went:
> 1N-2H
> 2S-3C
> 3H-4D-(X)
> 4H-(5D)-6S
>
> By this stage, it was clear to me that we'd lost our way a bit; we
> were vul. vs not, and I just had to hope partner had one of the
> relevant aces. We got lucky; partner did have both aces (he'd
> intended 3H as natural, showing a 4-card suit, and had taken 4D as
> 4sf, and 4H was a cue-bid) and the SQxx were offside. One pair played
> in 6C making, one in 5DX the other way (1100, but not as good a result
> as it deserved), one more in 6S and a couple in 6NT (oops?). There
> were a couple of pairs in 4S.
The assumption, when partner bids 3h is that his hand has improved
immeasurably when you bid clubs, enough that he is cooperating in a slam
try. His hand might well be
xx AKxx Axx AQxx.
My style is to take the cheapest first-round cuebid here, but if you had
simply bid 5NT GSF, it would have been quite satisfactory.
But the problem here is clearly a lack of agreement in this sequence.
If partner's stuffing in the red suits. But your partner's bidding was
a bit muddled. With the 5=4=0=4 hand he thought you might hold, you
would have rebid 3 Hearts, so you can't have that. Given you have shown
nine cards in the black suits, bidding a four-crd heart suit is a waste
of time.
It is, of course, quite possible that he is making a cuebid and he has
good spades, in which case he should correct your final club bid to
spades; Another way of expressing pleasure in spades is to bid 3
Spades over 3 Clubs and let you take the bidding on as you wish. Now if
he holds Qxx Axxx Axxx AQ you can still make your way to the fine spade
grand slam, winning the first trick, diamond Ace throwing a club, spade
to the ace, two high clubs, spade to the king, ruff a club with the
queen, ruff a diamond, draw trump and claim.
Bob
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