[luis]

BBO hand, you might have played it.

Everybody vulnerable. Good stamina, good opps, full glass of coke next to your mousepad, very good pd but you never played with him. You scored +480 on the first hand when your "safety" play picked up a Qx of trumps for +3.8 imps. As usual when you play with a new pd, freakish hands appear from all the corners....

Your pd (dealer):
AQT9x, KJx, KJ, AQ9

You:
-, Ax, Axxxx, KJT765

1) I've always said that the 2NT opening was the worst opening in std systems, since there's no point in preempting your pd when you have half the deck on your hands.... But yes, opener bids 2NT, how would you bid the hands with your pd?

2) Playing with a pickup pd I bid 3s (to be interpreted), and over 4c I jumped all the way to 5NT, he bid 7c ending a to-be-determined-if-succesful auction.
Plan the play in 7c on a low heart lead into.. yes, into your KJx
If your plan depends on the trump position clubs are 3-1 the opening leader having 3 of them

Luck!

[inquiry]

A slow day with no replies, so I will make a long rambling stab at it. But first, Luis, I know we disagree, but I say you have to alert 3S. You certainly expected your partner to take this for the minors, which he in fact did (not bidding his five card Spade suit). But we have argued this already in another thread.

You have 12 sure tricks on this lead. 3H, 1S, 6C, and 2D. One Diamond ruff, or dropping the spade King will see you home. There is also an outside possibility of a SPADE-DIAMOND squeeze, but come on, combining lines is the easiest, and highest percentage. If all goes south, you might try to fall back into the spade-diamond squeeze.

Win heart... I am curious to see if WEST has the heart QUEEN. Two funny things happened here. East didn't lead a trump against the grand slam (how good is EAST?), and EAST is likely to have lead away from a heart honor into the 2NT opener. Two very unusual options against a grand.

If WEST plays something like heart Ten or Nine, we have to assume EAST lead away from the heart QUEEN... and the play is straight forward. I would immediately cash the spade ACE (discard Diamond) and ruff a spade, and play a club to the nine, and ruff another spade, high this time, then play a club.

After 3 rounds of spades, I assume...a) no one showed out, and The king hasn't fallen. (Kxx, Kx, or K of spades either hand totals up to be about ... 22%)

No real need to rethink about the heart spots. EW have no reason to be honest in their signals or spot card leads. East could have stiff heart, 3h, or 7 hearts. Who knows?

Since you are in grand slam, EAST with singleton diamond would not lead it (against six, you can bet he has two or more diamonds for this heart lead, but not in seven).... So, ok, I play Diamond king and diamond. I pay the piper if East has singleton (non-queen) of diamonds.

This line makes with Kxx Kx or K of spades (22%), or with Diamonds 4-2 or 3-3 or singleton Diamond Q, or if the hand with the third trump has the five or six diamonds... All in all, the chances for that is about 93%. The combined chances, of course, is not 119%... :-), but rather about 96%.

If West plays the heart QUEEN… I fear bad things maybe happening here. What bad things? East may (not must) have lead from a singleton heart, so I my play will take that possibility into account. A singleton heart upsets the above line play because you can't untangle your heart winners, ruff a diamond, and pull trumps. You are an entry short. So if WEST plays the heart queen, I revert to try to drop the spade king in two rounds, and if no luck, go for two diamond ruffs in dummy (yes you only need one, but once you ruff one, you can safely ruff the second. This means I only try drop the spade king in two rounds not three. ((BTW, now a great West who reads the heart x as a stiff will not play the heart queen from QT9xxxx, but will play the heart x or maybe T on the opening lead… evil demon.... now you will never suspect the stiff heart and will go down I think... fortunately, few play this well).

If you make a mistake and play the first line (cashing one spade and ruffing two when WEST has the heart queen), all is not lost…if you decide in time that EAST's in fact has the dreaded 5-1-4-3 hand. You can revert back to an interesting diamonds/Spade squeeze where you ruff three spades in your hand, pull the last trump with your last trumps, cross to the HEART ACE, cross back to the DIAMOND KING, and cash the last heart... the seven card ending....

QT
Kx
KJ
A KJ
--
-- QT98
A 9
A543
Kx

after spade ruff, club, heart and diamond KING the position is....

Q
K
J
- K
--
- QT
-- --
A53
--

The Heart King does EAST in... but to be able to read this ending is clearly beyond me... unless the opponents help somehow... and of course, everyone else makes easily by ruffing two diamonds in the dummy. To this odds, when WEST has the heart QUEEN (so EAST maybe stiff), I add the odds of dropping K or Kx of spades… (about 5%), to the odds of catching diamonds 3-3, 4-2, 5-1 with stiff queen, or 5-1, 6-0 with the hand with three trumps having the Queen, or if trumps are 2-2. All in all, the odds are…Trumps 2-2 = 40.7%, Diamonds 3-3 = 35.5%, Diamonds 4-2 = 24.2%, diamonds 5-1 stiff queen = 2.4%, diamonds 6-0 or 5-1 with long trumps having diamonds = 6.8%, Spade K stiff = 0.5% and Spade Kx = 4%. Sadly, these odds are not all accumulative… but the odds of making this are excellent.

Diamonds will be right for you 93.2% of the time, and of the 6.8% of the time they are not, trumps will be 2-2, 40% (.4x.068) = 2.7%, raising your odds to 95.9% of the hands, and of the last 5.1% of the time, the spade king drops singleton or doubleton… which adds marginally to the chance to make… but raises the odds above

Ben

[luis]

Quote

A slow day with no replies, so I will make a long rambling stab at it. But first, Luis, I know we disagree, but I say you have to alert 3S. You certainly expected your partner to take this for the minors, which he in fact did (not bidding his five card Spade suit). But we have argued this already in another thread.

I did alert 3s as Slamish, interested in minors.

Even without an agreement my bid is conventional so a self-alert is just fine. I think we agree on this one.

[luis]

Ben,

Starting with a 2n opening of course.
How would you have bid the hand?