Sunday. August 7th 2011

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Board 18: East opens 1C; South may preempt 3C if partner will take that as long clubs (I think that's the most common understanding over a minor. Over a major suit, the jump cue would be asking partner to bid 3NT with a stopper.) West bids 3S (forcing, a new suit by responder who has not yet passed.) East raises to game. West takes stock: one or two spade losers, a heart, two or three diamonds. About 5 losers and partner opened the bidding; but anything in clubs will be wasted. Try visualizing: KQx Axxx Kx xxxx is possible, but you need diamonds to break no worse than 4-2 and even then it may be hard to set them up by ruffing. Better would be Kxxx Axx KQx xxxx, now both diamonds and spades come in and in fact 7S is likely to make. With a possible 13 tricks opposite 12 hcp, gambling on 6S seems reasonable. West can use 4NT to make sure partner has at least one Ace or key card. It's not ideal with the void, but slam would be terrible if partner has no key card, and that's the basic goal of 4NT -- stay out of hopeless slams. East shows 2 Key cards plus the Queen (5S) using RKCB or 1 ace using plain Blackwood, and West should bid 6S. (Absent the preempt, West might stop at 5S using plain Blackwood, guessing East has the Ace of clubs.)

West pulls trumps, cashes the Ace of diamonds and concedes a diamond, and then ruffs two more diamonds to establish the 5th as a winner. Along the way West may as well ruff clubs in hand, in case the Ace drops or a squeeze develops.

Our auction, with no preempt, was 1C-1S; 2S-4NT; 5S-6S. The raise from 1 to 2 gave me confidence partner had 4 trumps or a good 3 card holding. I would've stopped at 5S if partner had shown zero or one key card; I don't know of a good way to portray the void or ask about key cards excluding partner's first suit.

Board 26:  South opens 1NT; West may overcall 2C, natural or DONT (showing clubs and another suit.) Some may pass but those two tens would inspire me to bid despite being vulnerable. North counts 3.5 heart losers, a diamond and a club; partner's 15-17 can easily provide 5 cover cards so slam or grand slam looks plausible. Point counters can count 14 + 2 for the long suits for at least 16, and three aces are a plus. For slam purposes the heart suit is very anemic; I'd treat it as a four-bagger, bidding Stayman (2C if West passed, or 3C, cue-bidding West's suit.) South shows hearts, let's assume 3H over 3C. North can bid 4NT as RKCB, or use a gadget to show a fit -- bidding the other major after Stayman is one expert tretment, so 3S to confirm a heart fit and show slam interest. (It should stirke partner as weird that you would bid Stayman and then volunteer the unbid major, so this gadget has some protection against memory failure.)

South lacks a spade control -- the 3S bid has nothing to do with spades -- but lovely trumps, so a 4C cue-bid is recommended. I think of this as "borrowing" one of those high trumps to treat the club like an Ace. North now checks key cards (4NT), South replies 5H (2 without the Queen) and North settles for 6H as there may be a trump loser. That was the popular contract; one pair scored a matchpoint top with 6NT, but as North only has 14 hcp that seems riskier than 6H. Everyone took 13 tricks when both red suits came in with no losers.