Should I cooperate?

[jcreech]

SInce I always seem to mess up when I rotate the hands, the hand reported below, is not.

Dlr: North
Vul: Both

          North
            KJ42
            T72
            5
            98543

West                    East
  9                       A873
  AQ3                   K954
  AQJT83              K964
  JT6                    7

          South
            QT65
            J86
            72
            AKQ2


Auction:
North     East   South   West         North     East   South   West   
    P          P       1      1           P           P      1       dbl
  1       4 *    P       4          3       4       P       5  
    P        5        P          P           P            P        P
    P
* splinter: forcing raise in promising 4 trump and 0 or 1

This board was a push in the match.  Not a lot to the play, but the differences in how the auctions progressed seemed somewhat instructive.

At our table, West started with a double, I put pressure on the opponents by raising to 3 .  East did well by asking partner to name his best suit, but did not feel that he could move over the jump to 5 .  Pre-empts do not always give your partnership or team an opportunity to gain, but it always increases the difficulty for your opponents to be sure that they got to the right contract.  And sometimes, that is enough.

At the other table, I felt that East had an opportunity to move toward slam and chose the weaker action.  I can understand that East may regard the splinter as an overbid, but we are talking about a hand that is rich in controls opposite a partner who says his hand has improved with the ruffing potential of the East hand.  More importantly, East’s hand has improved after partner’s cuebid.  All four controls are working –   A, K of trump, and K in partner’s cued suit.  Since you are headed for 5 anyway, how can it hurt to show the A?  If partner quits in game, so be it, but at least you cooperated with a hand you should not be ashamed to lay down as dummy.

[kenberg]

I very much agree that in the left hand auction E should, I would say must, bid 4 over 4 .  Trumps are set, he has splintered, his partner has cue bid, he has the control next up the line. He might not know that a slam is there, but he certainly doesn't know that it isn't there. Over the table call of  5 then W,  regardless of his strength, will expect to be missing the two black aces .  So skipping over the 4 call gives his partner no option at all.

It isn't that often that a pair belongs in slam after the opponents open the bidding, but it can happen and here it does.

Incidentally, I like the 1 overcall rather than the double.  it's a strongish overcall, true enough, but after the double there is just too great a chance that N will preempt and then E will bid spades holding more spades and fewer diamonds, after which the auction might well go off the rails. In the right hand auction E was able to say "Which major shall we play this in?" and W was able to respond "Neither", but it will not always go that way.