[gnasher]

han, on 2012-March-23, 16:18, said:

I sadly couldn't find anything to disagree with in mikeh's posts. However, in an effort not to admit that I'm going to take the discussion to a different direction:

I think it is a good idea to play in this auction that 3D and 3H are not specific about shape, but 3D is just stronger than 3H. For example, you could bid 3H with x AQxx Kxx Qxxxx (wouldn't you?) and bid 3D with something like an extra club king.

With a gameforcing hand you can bid 2S (without shortness), or 3S/4D.

What do people think about this? I think you can play it after a 1C opening whenever 3M-1 is a jump.

I think it's a good idea, both in competition and uncontested. You can never have too many raises, and often a splinter helps the opponents more than it does our side.

I play 1♣-major;3♦ as the raise, rather than 3M-1, but not for any particular reason. You can play 1♦-1♠;3♥ the same way.

[dake50]

In my methods, North must double 5D = "I see 2xD-losers for slam"
Now the choice for South, having shown his all, is defend.

[Cyberyeti]

Not a lot of blame here, would the auction have been any different if S had Q♣ instead of J♠, in which case hearts 3-2, clubs not 4-0 is all you need.

[aguahombre]

Cyberyeti, on 2012-March-24, 09:47, said:

Not a lot of blame here, would the auction have been any different if S had Q♣ instead of J♠, in which case hearts 3-2, clubs not 4-0 is all you need.

That idea is covered already in this thread in two ways. Firstly, South shut down on North's first slam try, and shouldn't have done so with KXX AQTX X KQXXX after the 3D mini-spl.

Secondly, hearts 3-2 + clubs not 4-0 would require the guy with ten+ pointy cards to have exactly 2 hearts and 1 club, not any other disbursement of his (hopefully) 3 rounded cards. This seems to be against the odds.

[gnasher]

If South had ♣Q instead of ♠J, you might survive a 4-1 heart break. On a diamond lead you just ruff a diamond in dummy; on a spade lead you'd have to play diamonds before drawing the last trump, so you'd need spades not to be 6-1.

A 4-0 club break might not defeat you either. East would be on lead, so he'd have to guess whether to underlead his diamonds, and he might have AKQ anyway.

But the other argument still stands - Kxx AQTx x KQxxx is miles better than KJx AQTx x Kxxxx.