One of those hands...

[reldnahkram]

Playing as East, both sides vulnerable:

S:AQJT9xxx
H:A
D:Kx
C:Ax

South passes. I open 4S, and we make exactly.

Why, you ask? There are 7 trump winners with, say, the Q forcing the K, and AQJT9 is enough to force them all out, even if one opponent has all five. The two aces take, and the K almost certainly takes, and partner may have something (though getting over there will be tricky.

It was glorious. I also went 3-0 on the night, which helps.

Comments

[uncleamos]

*Grumble.*

[irilyth]

I think of an opening 4S bid as useful when your hand is worthless anywhere else, and when you have a weakness that you don't want the opponents to discover (i.e. there's some lead that will set you, which they might discover over the course of bidding).

In this case, 4S is the worst you can do -- if partner has any of the AD, KC, or KS, you have a good shot at slam... 4S cuts off those opportunities, and it doesn't seem to me like there's any harm in looking for them.

[think-too-much.livejournal.com]

That reminds me. There was another hand. My partner opens 1C, and I'm holding 16 points, AKQJx in hearts and another couple face cards. I jump to 2H to indicate strength, since I figure we might be in slam territory. Partner goes to 3NT (I think), and I initiate Blackwood. Partner responds 5H, so I decide to stop there since we're missing an ace, and I'm a wimp.

As it so happens, the opener doesn't lead to the missing ace of diamonds and we make all 13 tricks. Gah.

[think-too-much.livejournal.com]

Just the KC isn't that useful. I'd think you need two of those three (or at the very least, the AD and a heavy dose of finesse luck) to even think about slam.

[irilyth]

Mm, fair point; you actually have four possible losers in the worst-case scenario, so you really need to cover two of them to try for slam. The short suits give you other cards that let you cover two losers, though: KC+QC, AD+QD, KH+QH (if you can get to them, which maybe you can't), for example. Seems worth finding out, anyway. :^)

[reldnahkram.livejournal.com]

The queens are useless because there's no way to find out about them. Slam is only biddable if partner has the AD. If partner doesn't have the ace, stop at 5S, because you only can get 6S if partner has two of the missing kings, and those odds are pretty poor. Win the rubber rather than risk slam and going down.

It'd be nice if there were a way to end up in Gerber (not that West knew Gerber), rather than Blackwood, so you can theoretically get info on the A and K before committing to more than 5S, but I just don't see it. 2 NT is a gamble - partner likely goes to 3NT with anything (and partner had the hearts to say 3NT), but that's too risky - getting stuck in 2 NT is dangerous because it'd be much harder to reestablish control.