[Fluffy]

---

[mike777]

no blame...bid it.

my guess you will win trials more often if you bid it!

Best wishes win!

[gnasher]

East is in the midde of his range in HCP, but he has lots of queens and jacks and poor spot cards. I can't see any good reason to accept the invitation.

West knows that there are at most 33HCP, and his shape is poor. Furthermore, if 1NT denied four spades, his spade honours aren't pulling their weight. However, he does have good controls and two honours in partner's suit. I think his invitation is reasonable.

It's interesting to see how much a red ten would help. Either of these would bring the slam up to 50%.

[Fluffy]

Andy followed more or less my thoughts, I wonder if this bidding makes sense:

1♦-1♥
1NT-4NT
5♣-5NT
pass

[johnu]

The East hand is quacky and if you adjust for quacks, the hand evaluates much closer to 12 than 14. The other way to look at the East hand is that it is control deficient for the point range. When you have 2 balanced hands, you usually need 10 (Ace = 2, King = 1) controls to have a good play for slam, otherwise you are usually on a finesse at best. If partner is only asking your opinion about slam, it seems the answer is clear.

[dake50]

Appears opponents didn't lead a heart. Too bad you told them not to.


Edit/add: I like 1D-2Nt start.
Of course my 2Nt is 11-12 OR 19+ by rebid chosen.
We'll find a 4-4M if one of us looks.

[jogs]

gnasher, on 2014-January-11, 03:39, said:

West knows that there are at most 33HCP, and his shape is poor. Furthermore, if 1NT denied four spades, his spade honours aren't pulling their weight. However, he does have good controls and two honours in partner's suit. I think his invitation is reasonable.

Think you got it. The entire bridge community is too point count oriented. There also seems to be a unnatural fear of missing slam.
4333 is the worst pattern. 4432 is the second worst pattern. Doubleton in pard's 4-card heart suit is not best. Need diamond ten. Even ♠A and ♦J changed to ♠J and ♦A would help.

[Cyberyeti]

Fluffy, on 2014-January-11, 06:17, said:

Andy followed more or less my thoughts, I wonder if this bidding makes sense:

1♦-1♥
1NT-4NT
5♣-5NT
pass

We would just toss the decision back over 4N with 5N (usually a decent but not great 13 without a 5 card suit) and the W hand is a fairly clear pass I think. 5♣ is a better bid as it allows the showing of the full shape.

[Cascade]

Responder appears to be 3433, 3424 or 2434. Otherwise would likely have tried to find a 4=4 spade fit (not four spades), tried to find a 5=3 heart fit (not five hearts), raised diamonds (not four diamonds), introduced a five-card club suit (not five clubs).

If you have a 4=4 club fit then with the doubleton heart you have a ruffing value and partner's doubleton spade or diamond is likely to be useful. Therefore if you are accepting you need a mechanism to find the potential club fit. As 6C is likely to be a much better slam than 6NT.

I am not sure of your partnership agreements about opening with 44 in the minors but while it doesnt help on this hand it appears that opening 1♣ would be more flexible in getting to either 6♣ or 6♦ when that is right.

I agree with others that 4NT is a reasonable invite - opener might have had a better heart fit or five diamonds.

East on the other hand has a poor 13, with the doubleton heart, lack of controls, poor suit all of which indicate pessimism. If you could investigate a much better club slam then accepting is a better proposition, if you can investigate the club slam and still play 5NT then that is even better.

[ahydra]

If this is IMPs I think East should reject the invite. Even at pairs it's a bit frisky.

ahydra

[gnasher]

ahydra, on 2014-January-12, 06:20, said:

If this is IMPs I think East should reject the invite. Even at pairs it's a bit frisky.

Why is it different? At IMPs you stand to win or lose the same amount (13 vulnerable, 11 non-vulnerable), so the threshold for bidding slam is 50%. At matchpoints the threshold for bidding slam is 50% too, assuming you think your cardplay is average for the field.

[gszes]

east hand is almost as dull and boring as possible for a 13 count with

a cruddy suit (we opened) to boot. P is asking us to go to slam if we are

near the top and we are a far cry from the top of any 12 14 1n rebid

id much sooner consider bidding 6n with Axx Kxx Axxx Kxx for really

balanced 14 count than the current collection. at least have one 5/6 card suit

if you are going to try with 13 and the rest should still probably be controls

Kxx xx AQxxx Axx or Axx KQ Jxxxxx Kx where the heart Q has a better chance

of being really useful than if in clubs or spades

I realize that in these days of ever lighter opening bids a full bodied 13 count looks

like a good hand but it still needs to be considered in context.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

the question is, does Opener have a max. or not.
Responder has 19HCP, he sees 12-14, i.e. 33HCP are possible, hence inviting is ok,
the 4333 is not enough to justify not trying.

Opener has 13, he has the Queen of hearts, he has a 4432 shape, ... but lots of Queens
and Jacks, I think the decison for Go / NoGo is 50 / 50.

Maybe the 50 / 50 means, you should reinvite, raising 4NT to 5NT is sometimes played as,
I am not totally broke, but also not 100% convinced I have a max.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[mfa1010]

P_Marlowe, on 2014-January-22, 07:52, said:

Maybe the 50 / 50 means, you should reinvite, raising 4NT to 5NT is sometimes played as,
I am not totally broke, but also not 100% convinced I have a max.

I'm not a fan of that bidding.

On this particular hand we are 100% for 11 tricks. But that is not typical if 6N is not good. Often bad luck in 5N will then put us down to 10 tricks. I doubt that the extra precision in the slam decision will compensate for that. A substandard 6N may easily be a better contract than a typical making but somewhat unsure 5N.