[cjames]

The bidding went like this:

N: 2 ♣
S: 2 NT = 3 controls.
N: 3 ♥ 5+
S: 4 ♥

---

Now what? The agreements is RKC 1430 and cue bids. How can you reach 7 H? And is it a good slam? We ended up in 6nt, one pair in 6 H with 13, and one pair bid 7 H.

How can you know about DK? I did bid 4 NT in north. Partner said 5 C, I said 5nt and after our agrement he did bid 6 CL. What to do know? We ended up in 6 nt.

Should you try some cueing instead of 4nt, and how would that look?

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

as opener you know, that partner
holds 3 kings.

RKCB tells you he holds the king of
hearts.

As opener you can count

- 6 heart tricks
- 3 Aces
- 2 Kings

If you "know", partner holds the king of
clubs, you can count to 12, unless partner
holds another Queen or length you will
have trouble to finding your 13th trick.
=> sign of in 6

Seeing both hands, 7 is quite good, because
of the 5 card suit in dummy.

With kind regards
Marlowe

PS: It does not matter if he holds the King of
diamonds or the King of spades.
There are methods to find out, which King partner
holds, e.g. specific king ask (?!), but I am usure,
if this forum is the right place to ask / explain.

[cjames]

Yes, that was kinda my conclusion. But do you sign of in 6 H ( where there might be a possibility for 13 tricks ) or do you sign of in 6 NT?

Ah, but don't you need the KD as a enter to dummy if diamond is lead? (thinking 7 H )

[P_Marlowe]

cjames, on Apr 4 2007, 04:57 AM, said:

Yes, that was kinda my conclusion. But do you sign of in 6 H ( where there might be a possibility for 13 tricks ) or do you sign of in 6 NT?

Ah, but don't you need the KD as a enter to dummy if diamond is lead? (thinking 7 H )

Hi,

Wheter you play 6H or 6NT depends on the scoring.
Playing IMP's, if you can count to 12, you should
play NT, if not 6H.
Playing MP you may try 6NT, but it is a guess, 6H+1
beats 6NT=, but 6NT= beats 6H=.

...

I dont know, what 6C showed.

6H is most likely better, if partner does not have
the king of clubs (promised by 6C?!), you have the club
finesse to give you your 12trick, but you may also have
shortage in dummy, giving you the chances to ruff.

Regarding Entry: If Diamonds are lead and partner
does not have the king of diamonds, you have the
king of spade as an Entry.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[DWM]

How do you make the 13th trick without an error by opp's

I can only count.

1 Spade
6 Hearts
2 Diamonds
3 Clubs

[inquiry]

I would recommend that you do away with control showing bids. In someways they simplify the auction, but in many others they complicate it. For instance, on this auction, opener knows about three kings (but not if the "fitting" one). After the raise to 4♥, he can find out about the heart king (and eventually, as mentioned above with Specific king ask) which other king is held...but the most useful feature --- king-fifth of clubs goes undescribed.

Playing your method, over 3♥ (your control showing responses have also forced the bidding "higher" effectively preempting yourself), a thoughtful repsonder might show his five card club suit then raise hearts with a four club bid... of course this complicates things as the delayed 4♥ might be a "preference" or after 4♣ partner will bid 4♥ and you have to bid something over that (probably 5♥.

[P_Marlowe]

DWM, on Apr 4 2007, 06:42 AM, said:

How do you make the 13th trick without an error by opp's

I can only count.

1 Spade
6 Hearts
2 Diamonds
3 Clubs

4 clubs, since clubs break 4-2.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[Edmunte1]

You cannot bid seven without knowing about club length. Suppose you ask for RKCB, and find one, and then ask for specific kings and find about ♣K + K♦. Now you can count 12 tricks (6♥+1♠+2♦+3♣) The 13th warrior must come either from ♦Q or ♣J (partner must have KJxx in clubs) or as in our example 5th club. But we're out of space for this.

I think that South after 3♥ bid with a 100% slam hand and secondary club suit and an usefull doubleon should have bid 4♣ showing a source of tricks, then showing support. After this seven is easy

[cjames]

So what do you suggest N bid after 4 ♣ from South?

[Edmunte1]

4♥ natural and forcing

[P_Marlowe]

cjames, on Apr 4 2007, 08:21 AM, said:

So what do you suggest N bid after 4 ♣ from South?

Hi,

RKCB + specific king ask will tell you about
the kind of clubs, and about the kind of hearts
and diamomds, ... the main trouble will be, that
you may have problems stopping in 6H on a
different layout.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[Apollo81]

This type of situation where there is a need to make a general invite to a higher level (grand in this case) but only one bid available (6♦ in this case) other than a signoff (6♥ in this case) is common.

The intermediate bid (6♦ in this case) is best played as "last train" It doesn't show/ask for anything specific but rather is a general invite to the next level.

Another common example of the "last train" concept in action:

1♥-(Dbl)-2♥-(3♣)-
3♦

Since 3♦ is the only bid other than a signoff that could let the partnership out below game, it is last train: a general game try rather than a diamond-showing bid.

This is a convention of sorts and you should make sure your partner understands this concept before trying it.

In your auction, South may have signed off anyway even if North had bid 6♦ "last train"

[hrothgar]

Different bidding approaches have their strengthes and weaknesses.

Your partnership decided that to use control showing responses over a strong 2♣ opening. So be it.

There are advanatges to this approach. Your partnership was in an excellent position to determine whether you had sufficient controls to justify a grand.

There are also disadvantages: You were unable to identify the long club suit which turns out to be vital for this grand.

I don't think that this grand is biddable using your methods. Such is life...

[mikeh]

I'm not a fan of control showing responses, altho I only played them with one partner for a short period of time so I don't have a lot of actual experience with them. My feeling is that they consume too much bidding space before we get to describing shape, and I like to describe shape first.

However, I don't think this makes any difference here. I have played several response structures, and doubt that I would reach 7♥ with any of them. The key, as has been pointed out above, is the Kxxxx in ♣s.

And I don't think that, in real life, anyone would ever 'show' that suit rather than raise partner's ♥ suit first, and doing so eliminates the grand.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this type of hand is a trap for the advancing player, who sees that 7♥ is a good spot and concludes that there 'must be' a sequence that allows one to reach it. He or she then constructs such a sequence, but in doing so, distorts (perhaps unconsciously) normal bidding, such that in future hands, which of course aren't exactly like this one, his or her bidding is now inappropriate.

Far better, in my view, to accept that there are always going to be some hands that cannot be bid accurately... this is one of them, for most methods.

[jmc]

After 2c-2NT-3H-4H-4NT-5C (1430)-5NT-(guarantees all the key cards)-

Cant responder consider bidding 7H on his own? He knows partner is interested in the grand and he has 5 clubs his partner doesn't know about. If partner needs something extra for the grand, what could it be other than some extra shape. Responder could even show club king and then over openers sign off of 6H or 6NT bid 7H in my opinon.

Is this partner punishment?

jmc

[mikeh]

jmc, on Apr 4 2007, 10:48 AM, said:

After 2c-2NT-3H-4H-4NT-5C (1430)-5NT-(guarantees all the key cards)-

Cant responder consider bidding 7H on his own?  He knows partner is interested in the grand and he has 5 clubs his partner doesn't know about.  If partner needs something extra for the grand, what could it be other than some extra shape.  Responder could even show club king and then over openers sign off of 6H or 6NT bid 7H in my opinon.

Is this partner punishment?

jmc

Very few players nowadays allow responder to bid 2N, naturally, in response to 2♣. There are a number of reasons for that, including:

1. if notrump is the final strain, it is usually better for the strong hand to bid it first

2. the 2♣ bid is usually based on either a powerful one-suiter or a big balanced hand. If the latter, then see point 1: plus, if opener gets to rebid 2N, then we can profitably use our notrump response structure, including stayman and transfers etc. If the former, then we want to stay out of opener's way... especially if he has a major.. we want to allow him to bid his major at the 2-level, thus allowing us to raise while staying below game, if we have a fit... this staying below game preserves space to make slam moves.

In any event, if we did allow 2N here, I still fail to see why North should use keycard on the auction you suggested, let alone why North should make a grand slam try. He has opened 2♣ and then rebid 3♥. While he has a good hand, he has already shown the good hand by that time, so I am puzzled as to why he now takes over. This is, I think, a reflection of the tendency amongst less-advanced players of overbidding good hands and underbidding weak ones. If I were north, I'd treat my hand as a minimum and respect signoffs by partner, but, conversely, if I were S, I'd be driving to slam opposite a 2♣ opener based on long ♥s.

Now, if 2N conventionally showed 3 kings, then I would drive to slam as North, but couldn't it be QJx Kxx Qxxx Jxx? 9 hcp, balanced... would you feel safe using 4N as North?

It is too easy to fall into the trap of inventing auctions that work with the hands we actually see.... always, always consider what the auctions mean as opposed to what we are looking at.

[Apollo81]

jmc, on Apr 4 2007, 11:48 AM, said:

After 2c-2NT-3H-4H-4NT-5C (1430)-5NT-(guarantees all the key cards)-

Cant responder consider bidding 7H on his own? He knows partner is interested in the grand and he has 5 clubs his partner doesn't know about. If partner needs something extra for the grand, what could it be other than some extra shape. Responder could even show club king and then over openers sign off of 6H or 6NT bid 7H in my opinon.

Is this partner punishment?

jmc

After 5NT, I would think something like xx Kxx Kxx KQxxx would qualify for a 7♥ bid and that something like xxx Kxx Kxx Kxxx would qualify for a 6♥ bid. The actual hand is somewhere in between so I think 6♣ is fine.

[pclayton]

Aside from some relay system, I can see getting to 7♥ in a vanilla strong club context if South judges his hand worth a positive club response, or even a 1N response if the 5 clubs can be discovered.

After a 2♣ response, unless you play very old-fashioned "Goren" responses, and 3♣ is OK, then you aren't getting there unless you guess right.

[bid_em_up]

cjames, on Apr 4 2007, 04:45 AM, said:

The bidding went like this:

N: 2 ♣
S: 2 NT = 3 controls.
N: 3 ♥  5+
S: 4 ♥

---

Now what? The agreements is RKC 1430 and cue bids. How can you reach 7 H? And is it a good slam? We ended up in 6nt, one pair in 6 H with 13, and one pair bid 7 H.

How can you know about DK? I did bid 4 NT in north. Partner said 5 C, I said 5nt and after our agrement he did bid 6 CL. What to do know? We ended up in 6 nt.

Should you try some cueing instead of 4nt, and how would that look?

2♣-2♦ (waiting, 2♥ would be immediate negative)

2♥-3♣ (positive, suit showing, I prefer to show a secondary source of tricks here than the immediate 3♥ raise....if you don't do it now, you will be unable to do so later)

3♥-4♥ (trump support)

4N-5♣ (1 key for ♥)

5N (all keys and trump Q assured)-6♥ (2 kings)

At this point, North should be able to count, 6 hearts in hand, 1 spade, 1 diamond, 3 clubs and whatever other K partner has (either the spade K or the diamond K).

Thats 12. Since partner has 5+ clubs, it is entirely probable that we have 4 or more club tricks, or (do I dare say it in the b/i forum?) a squeeze will develop.

On the basis of likely having 4 or more club tricks, I think you can safely bid 7H at this point.

A 2nd alternative:

2♣-3♣

I prefer to make a positive response with a suit and a positive hand. It lets partner immediately know that I may have a source of tricks. If I have to wait until I hold two of the top three honors before I can bid my own suit as some people like to require, I will be waiting forever, since two of the top three honors are more likely to be in the 2♣ openers hand. One of the top three is a much more reasonable approach.

3♥-4♥

4N- continued as auction #1.

By agreeing to control showing responses, you have actually made the auction more difficult as responder can never show his hand effectively. Given your actual methods, I don't believe you can actually reach 7♥ and feel good about it, at least not until you see dummy.

[skjaeran]

It seems all agree on opening this hand 2♣. Maybe that's because this is in the B/I forum - I surely opened 2♣ in my early days...

I don't - I'd open this 1♥ any day.
Not that it helps a lot on this layout - I can't say that we'd be able to locate Kxxxx of ♣'s.

It would be easy to get to show ♥ support and the 3 kings. But in a RKCB sequence, north wouldn't be able to show the ♣Q, only ask for 3rd round control. So we'd most probably be stuck in 6♥, unless one made an "inspired" call.