7 card support

[wackojack]

Here is a bit of fun.  You are playing in a 10 board  iac team match and your team is 3 imps down and on board  9 you get dealt:
  K3,    Q976543,  3,  KQ3.  White against red.  Playing 2/1.  Partner opens 1 , you respond 1NT and partner jump rebids 3 .  I cannot think of any slower bid showing slam interest other than 4NT.  Partner responds 5 .  Your bid.

[kenberg]

I guess I pass. I suppose the 3 was game forcing so I might have bid 4 over 3 . Presumably that accepts heart as trumps.  With no keys this is not exactly a great hand for slam. After rkc and 5 partner has two keys. Did I really want to be in slam if he has three keys? We would be off two keys. Then, if one of the missing keys is the K,  we are only missing one ace and maybe we can bring in w/o loss, but I wouldn't bet on it. So is 4NT right?  If I bid 4 and partner has four keys he can probably, or at least maybe, figure out we belong in 6.

[Masse24]

FWIW, 4 should have agreed and shown some slam interest. But lacking agreements, 4NT seems reasonable as RKCB.

In answer to your question, I would pass. Yes 5 could show five keys, but in an IAC match that hand is probably opened 2 more often than not. Also, I try hard to avoid "asking" with zero keys, though it's not always possible to maneuver the auction that way.

[kenberg]

Todd and I seem to have posted roughly simultaneously but I agree that it is best to avoid 4NT with no keys. In this case, if partner hes five keys, a bid of 4 should get us to at least 6 . He has all the keys, my 4 shows enthusiasm even though, as pard can see, I have no keys.

[wackojack]

Yes I agree that 4 is infinitely preferable to 4NT.  4NT is so often used inappropriately by iac's and this sets a very bad example.  Nevertheless, having received a 5  reply, which is hand is more likely?
Hand (a) Axxxx,  AKxx,  Ax,  Ax,  19HCP that clearly cannot be opened 2  . or
Hand (b) AQJxx,    AJxxx,  KQ,  J,  18HCP that is worth a game force of 3  ?   

OK it is clearly going to be something like hand (b), so pass is obvious.  But I had a rush of  blood to the head thinking that the only way we could win this match was for me to rely on partner having hand (a) and so I bid 7  .  LHO doubled and that was the final contract. 

The hands turned out to be:
AQ952,  AJ1082,  J105,  void
  K3,    Q976543,  3,    KQ3

A was led and ruffed and the losing  was discarded on the Q  wrapping up 13 tricks. 

Partner rightly scolded me for my 7 bid.  I cheekily did point out that hers was not a hand to force to game with 3  .  At the other table east intervened over 1  with a rather dubious 2N, propelling them to 5 so that NS could not check keycards and they bid and made 6  .  So as it happened my 7 was the match winner. 

Now for the really interesting question.  Assuming no intervention how can we get to the very good 6  contract?  The best I can come up with is:
1         1NT
2          4 splinter
?

It looks reasonable now to bid 6  .  What you would really like is to be able to make an exclusion bid of 5  but that is not possible when the bidding gets high too quickly.   


 

[jcreech]

I would have bid 7 NT, thinking it just about had to be showing 5 keys without the Queen, and a safer spot to play with all of my losers covered and eliminating the possibility of a ruff.  Of course, with only 2 keys, I already think of myself as being too high.

With a two-suited hand, I tend to open 1 rather than 2 , so the possibility of a demand-bid rated hand is always a real possibility.  Of course, I am expecting a bit stronger hand than your partner showed up with.

Based on my thought process, it is barely possible to have either 18 or 18 HCPs with only two keys, but you start with 19 HCPs with five keys.

Of course, if partner responded properly to RKC with 5NT, showing the void, it now becomes easier to stop in 6 assuming the void is part of the jump shift.  I might think of 4 with a void, but would be far more inclined to think of two (and unable to stop below 6 ).

[kenberg]

Certainly the auction should begin 1 - 1NT - 2 . The idea would be that if partner bids again over my 2 , perhaps bidding 2NT,  I will then bid a passable 3 . If partner has a fit and a non-minimum, he can raise to 4.

Now here we definitely have a fit!   So:   1 - 1NT - 2 - 4 . Now are trump. Opener is happy with the fit and happy with the splinter, so 1 - 1NT - 2 - 4 - 4 sounds right. Now it is probably up to responder. He is the one who knows of the massive fit. He doesn't know opener has five, but still it sounds good. He could reasonably think that it now all comes down to key cards. So 1 - 1NT - 2 - 4 - 4 - 4NT. Maybe they have an agreement about responding with a void, maybe they don't (probably they don't), but opener remembers this auction started with 1 1NT, opener is looking at a 12 count, 12 count, 7 seems like a stretch, I think he just bids 6 . Among other things, he expects to lose to the A at T1.

Added: Honestly, I am by no means sure I would reach 6 playing with my clone. We are missing the A and the K. Responder knows, after 1 - 1NT - 2 ,  that he has seven hearts and opener has at least four , and opener knows, after 1 - 1NT - 2 - 4 ,  that he has five hearts and responder has at least four. But nobody knows that then have a 12 card fit. I am thinking that after the 4 splinter, the 4 response, and then 4NT, perhaps opener can say to himself "Well, I only bid 2 over the 1NT, I have a pretty food hand for that 2 call now that I know we have a decent fit, the splinter is nice, my void is likely to be nice, partner is trying for a slam even after the  1 - 1NT - 2   beginning, this should be enough for him, so I bid 6 ". Something like that. But it might not happen.