[DavEMikeH1]

2H is 5-5 Major Minor preempt

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So I had discussed bridge conventions with this partner for about an hour and a half before we played and what we had talked about for slam bidding was 1430 and Kickback (not applicable obviously here) along with playing Specific King follow-up. This is IMPS and also both partners are upper echelon intermediate players if that's important. Given this information what should I have done?

I will later post post-mortem...

[frank0]

I guess 5♥ if partner cue 5♠ jump to 7♦.

[BunnyGo]

I'd start with 5♥.

[mr1303]

What are you expecting partner to be able to cue here?

I keep it simple, 4NT RKCB

[phil_20686]

with an unknown partner I would just bid 6d.

[billw55]

phil_20686, on 2012-April-05, 03:59, said:

with an unknown partner I would just bid 6d.

Pretty much agree. With BBO randoms I would even be tempted to bid 5♦ then double 5♥. Have you seen the suits they overcall on?

edit: ah, rereading the OP I see this was not a BBO random situation. Nevermind ...

[DavEMikeH1]

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I'm ok if you also disagree with my X (since pass must be forcing) and leave it to partner, showing my potential interest in 7. At least we played perfect defense for -1100...

Supposing you do bid 5H and partner obliges with 5S. Tack on one more club and one less diamond and 7D might not make (ok it would on this hand) but then you're relying on a finesse into the long club bidder...Is this too pessimistic?

[mikeh]

When you are preempted, it rarely pays, in a new partnership, to worry about grand slams.

I would have bid 6♦. Why?

Because I cannot ever count 13 tricks by bidding 4N, assuming 4N to be keycard. Now, maybe I can then bid 5N, showing all the keys, but I think it unrealistic to expect partner to ever be able to bid the grand...not in a first time partnership, unless I had not only great respect for partner but also expected him/her to have a similar degree of trust in me.

5♥ will maybe beget 5♠, but why should it? Surely N can reason that we are cuebidding in diamonds, and he won't ever show a spade suit....any spade bid by him is a cue, and while I usually bid cheapest cue rather than A before K, my view is that in most auctions in which our first cue is above game, we cue first round controls, because there is no room to clarify whether we are showing first or second round control.

So I wouldn't expect 5♥ to fetch 5♠.

As it happened, I think passing 6♥ is absolutely clear....sending the message not only that we have first round control but that we had extras for our leap to slam.

Overcaller can now, imo, choose 6♠, altho it is possible that I am being a result merchant here....I don't think so (since I wouldn't suggest 6♠ otherwise) but I hate knowing the hand.

The thought I would take from this hand is that maybe the partnership should use a form of Michaels after the 2♥ call. Since this opening is virtually unknown in ACBLand, my practice when encountering it, is to defend as if opener were showing a weak 2♥ call, and now we have either leaping michaels or 3♥, depending on partnership.

After leaping michaels, 4N should be keycard in both suits, and it is now trivial to bid the grand in spades.

[DavEMikeH1]

So we had talked about an unusual over unusual cue bid though we didn't discuss what 3H would mean in this situation. We did not talk about Leaping Michaels (though I mentioned it to him post-mortem). He said even if we had discussed it he would not have bid it feeling as though he would like more strength.

Also thanks for your analysis Mikeh, I like it.

[manudude03]

DavEMikeH1, on 2012-April-05, 16:21, said:

Supposing you do bid 5H and partner obliges with 5S. Tack on one more club and one less diamond and 7D might not make (ok it would on this hand) but then you're relying on a finesse into the long club bidder...Is this too pessimistic?

That would mean partner randomly decided to overcall 3D instead of 2S with 5-5. Maybe 1 less spade, 1 less diamond and 2 more clubs, but then that looks more like a double than a 3D overcall. In short, partner will pretty much always have 6 diamonds here.

[DavEMikeH1]

manudude03, on 2012-April-05, 17:43, said:

That would mean partner randomly decided to overcall 3D instead of 2S with 5-5. Maybe 1 less spade, 1 less diamond and 2 more clubs, but then that looks more like a double than a 3D overcall. In short, partner will pretty much always have 6 diamonds here.

Ah, right...