[ArtK78]

Matchpoints. Regional Open Pairs, Barometer Final. You and your partner, having barely qualified for the finals, are in serious contention nearly halfway through the finals.

---

System is 2/1 game forcing. 2♣ is game forcing. 3♠ is a cue bid. 5♠ is king ask (specific kings) guaranteeing all of the key cards.

I was East, and, clearly, we reached the top spot on the way to winning the event. Having said that, I would appreciate it if you would criticize the auction and evaluate the final contract.

[JLOGIC]

Doesn't seem like that great of a contract to me, maybe I'm missing something.

[Fluffy]

Since it is impossible for East to know if partner has 2 clubs or singleton, or 4 or 5 hearts, or even the ♣Q, I think he did just fine, and obviously the credit is for him since he took responsability.

I disagree with him about 3♠ showing 100% ♠A, but it turned ok.

[ArtK78]

Fluffy, on 2014-April-06, 19:11, said:

Since it is impossible for East to know if partner has 2 clubs or singleton, or 4 or 5 hearts, or even the ♣Q, I think he did just fine, and obviously the credit is for him since he took responsability.

I disagree with him about 3♠ showing 100% ♠A, but it turned ok.

In this partnership, I guarantee you that it is 100% that the 3♠ bid showed the ♠A.

[gszes]

I wonder what the actual overall % of this hand making 7 are:)

We start with needing 3/2 trumps to have any chance so we are 68% from the
get go (already well below the roughly 80% recommended for a grand at MP
<though 80 is probably way too high in a top notch field>).
Even if we assume the 32 trump break and play accordingly we need a fair
amount of luck with clubs. If they break 33 no sweat but 42? we need rho to
hold the 4 clubs since if lho has the 4 clubs our ability to ruff twice is
almost nonexistent and if clubs are 51 forgetaboutit. The upshot is among
the various club breaks we have around 62% of the club breaks in our favor
so that drops us to around 56% hardly a horrid % but would we really be happy
arriving in 7 before seeing the outcome??? congrats on the win:)

[Cyberyeti]

gszes, on 2014-April-06, 21:27, said:

I wonder what the actual overall % of this hand making 7 are:)

We start with needing 3/2 trumps to have any chance

Not quite, S having ♥xxxx and 2 clubs will also do I think on the normal trump lead.

[ArtK78]

Thanks for the posts.

During the bidding, I was pretty sure that the grand was better than 60%, but not up to the usual standards for bidding a grand at matchpoints. Nevertheless, one of the nice things about playing in a barometer pair event is that you know where you stand (with a one-round lag). I thought that we needed a board, and this one seemed to be one that was available.

As it was, bidding 6 and making 7 would have been average, while bidding the grand was worth 8 out of 9. The difference was most of our margin of victory. Of course, had the grand failed, the story would not have a happy ending.

[whereagles]

4NT seems dangerous.. West should be doing the ace ask, not East.

[gszes]

Cyberyeti, on 2014-April-07, 01:22, said:

Not quite, S having ♥xxxx and 2 clubs will also do I think on the normal trump lead.

Now my head is starting to hurt since I wonder if J98x and 2 clubs in south hand can stop the
grand with a trump lead. This grand is starting to look unbeatable:))))))))) but I admit I
missed the idea of a trump lead solving my problems at trick 1. I am not sure how to qualtify
that into the calculations however---if you have any idea let me know.

[gszes]

Cyberyeti, on 2014-April-07, 01:22, said:

Not quite, S having ♥xxxx and 2 clubs will also do I think on the normal trump lead.

Now my head is starting to hurt since I wonder if J98x and 2 clubs in south hand can stop the
grand with a trump lead. This grand is starting to look unbeatable:))))))))) but I admit I
missed the idea of a trump lead solving my problems at trick 1. I am not sure how to quantify
that into the calculations however---if you have any idea let me know.

[ArtK78]

whereagles, on 2014-April-07, 11:34, said:

4NT seems dangerous.. West should be doing the ace ask, not East.

Why does 4NT seem dangerous if you assume that the 3♠ bid promised the ♠A?

[rhm]

To me the bidding was in line with current slam bidding dogmas:
Do a little bit of control bidding and then check whether enough keycards are present. If all are, then invite a grand.
The flaw with this dogma is, that nobody cares to count tricks.
Whether there are enough of them is checked when dummy comes down.
Of course experts are not naive, but potential for a source of tricks will do in the bidding.

In this case the likelihood that a grand will be a good contract, depends on such things like
♥J, ♣Q and the number of club cards West holds, but East had no clue about this in the bidding.
(Would West have bid 6♣ with the ♣Q, and even if, would he have done so holding both ♣Q and the ♦K ?)
Give West a fifth heart and the grand would have been much better even without the ♦K.
If you have an eight card fit only, the trump jack tends to be crucial for a grand.

Rainer Herrmann

[whereagles]

ArtK78, on 2014-April-07, 16:08, said:

Why does 4NT seem dangerous if you assume that the 3♠ bid promised the ♠A?

Why should you assume that? (Unless that's the agreement, of course..)

[whereagles]

rhm, on 2014-April-08, 02:58, said:

To me the bidding was in line with current slam bidding dogmas:
Do a little bit of control bidding and then check whether enough keycards are present. If all are, then invite a grand.
The flaw with this dogma is, that nobody cares to count tricks

There are different ways to invite a grand after keycard check. For instance:

5NT as "got any extras for your bidding so far?" or
6x as "semisolid suit in need of a fitting honor. Got some?"

Etc..