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i liked my lop until i read this one and am ashamed to admit it never occurred to me. It handles all of the possible variants my lop handled plus anytime lho started with xx in clubs.

i like the idea of x we know p will not pass but what if something other than 4d happens? All it takes is xx xx xxxxx xxxx to give us a superb chance of making 5c. I am willing to chance 5c over a 4d bid. Bidding 4c here gives up on a possible (unlikely) 3n for no good reason other than pure pessimism.

w/o good asking bids there is little we can do but guess here, Since it is with 30-32 hcp I am not going to worry much about the 7 level. There are indeed some really poor hands p can have that might make 6s impossible but they are few and far between. I would bid 4c (gerber) over 1n and unless i am missing 2 aces (possible) i will bid 6s. 6S may not be the top mp scoring spot but if 6 is doomed to fail it may go down less.

rho had a chance to make our slam searching life veryyyyy difficult with a 5h bid somthing they might do even with a stiff heart if they have little/no defense. I fear rho is more interested in defending than sacrificing and it requires almost too perfect a hand from p to make 6s. IMO we may be fixed but I think its safer to just pass and hope bad breaks happen to keep us from making too many.

our hand is bad but it is not completely hopeless. I would bid 4d here. I do this mainly becasue i do not want p to get excited about the possibility we might have almost no wasted values in hearts (which is what i would be saying if i were to bid 4s or a 5c/5d bid). P will pretty much know our compete distribution and the fact that we didnt feel our hand was as bad as it could be. If p wishes to explore further i doubt our hand will be a huge disappointment. Do not get me wrong this hand is very close to a 4n bid but the AK of spades could easily be the difference btn slam or not. I would save 4n for something like KQJx KQJxx xx xx

I will duck the first club and win the second followed by 3 rounds of dia (or 4 if they split 41) ending in dummy and lead the 3rd club pitching a low heart. The main reason I am doing this is to see if I can get the opps to cash our their club winners and let me know if it is safe to attack hearts to the 9 or to go for the finesse. There is also the chance if lho wins the club and cashes the last club(s) they will return a heart vs a spade and give us our trick w/o a guess. The main advantage of playing this way is if the opps cash 3 more clubs we know that only a very unlikley major suit squeeze or the heart finesse are our only chance for 9 tricks. If rho takes the 3rd club and leads a low heart w/o cashing the last club we are at a complete guess (I have to admit that if defended that way I would play the heart Q).

i am not that happy with the 4c bid but my main dislike is the 5c bid. There is little overall concern with the opps bidding a slam so the concept would appear to be is 5c always going to be a good sac. We just dont know and there is little sense in risking -800 when it is possible the opps will let us play in 4c.

3h bidder has 14 cards thats why noone can answer

i am normally a firm believer in overcalling good 5 card suits when reasonably able. This hand is a rare exception to me because p does not need that much for us to make 3n and it will be easier to get p to invite with nt than over a 1s overcall. This will be especially true if p does not have spade support and an otherwise boring hand with no dia stop (98xx).

i had a chance to bid hearts the previous round (x) when i needed only 6 tricks to make my bid effective. I apparently decided the risk of a poor lead was not worth the reward of a possible +620. We now appear to be slated for no worse than -170 and suddenly the reward of +620 when we need TEN tricks for our bid to be effective seems like too much to pass up?? LHO has announced a super max there is a fairly good chance p has around ten balanced HCP (at least we hope they are balanced if we bid 4h). The odds of making 4h are not much greater than before with a much bigger risk factor. We need to get over our aversion of soliciting partners help. X 2h immediately and if p does not respond kindly over 3s and you cannot contain your enthusiasm at least you can bid 4c to show your second suit. Once in a while 2hx will get p off to a bad lead but we will be able to compete far more effectively when our risk is for 6 tricks and not ten tricks. FWIW pass

since 4d would be michaels an immediate 3d bid should just be a cue bid showing a very powerful hand or looking for a dia stop for 3n. IMO it is too small a target to use 3d as michaels in the hope that your limit is 3 of a major. how you will proceed will depend on what happens next. IF p bids 3h u bid 3s which is stronger than an origianl 3s bid If p bids 3s (wow) 5d exclusion should solve your problem. if P bids 3n u bid 4s which is stronger than an origianl 3s bid If p bids 4c I would cue bid to see if we can get to 6c. if p bids 4d (wow) hard to imagine p with a hand where 7c wont have play and if rho makes a lightner x it is probably with a spade void we can convert to 7s and know where to take a finesse if needed.

i see 4 possible hands for w to have that gives me a chance xx KQJxxxx xxx K xx KQJxxxxx xx K xx KQJxxxxx xxx void xx KQJxxxx xx (KJ or JT) i did not include x in clubs or dia since either of those leads would be preferable to the heart K. I can cater to all 4 hand types if trumps are 22. If lho has 3 trumps I am reduced to hoping for a 33 dia break and pull the last trump and attack diamonds. If trumps break 22 however I have a much more interesting lop. trick 1 ruff heart trick 2 spade K trick 3 spade Q to A (trumps breaking 22) trick 4 low dia (rho must duck or hand is over) trick 5 heart A (pitch a club) trick 6 ruff a heart trick 7 low dia (rho must duck again or hand is over) this will leave us with the following position 9 void Kx Q9x Jx void x xxx we now lead dia to the K. if dia break 33 hand is over since spade 9 provides entry to good dia and all we lose are 2 clubs and a dia If dia break 42 rho must win and return a dia which we ruff reducing our 2 hands to 9 void void Q9x J void void xxx we now exit with a club and remember that lho had a chance to pitch any endplay club holding on the 3rd/4th round of dia. so if lho began with void KT Kx Jx Tx xx in clubs we are down if lho began with K KJ JT there is nothing they can do either by holding onto their clubs or pitching them on diamonds as long as we cover the J if lho plays it. If lho pitched offending club honor(s) all we have to do is play the 9 and the most rho can do is take 2 club tricks before surrendering a club for trick 10. The main advantage of this lop over assuming lho began 7222 (very likely) is that it takes advantage of 33 dia breaks on top of all the 7222 hands where it makes any difference.

lets grant that, in both cases and similar hands, 2s is worse than pass (assuming that 2h fails or we go down too much in 2s. There are a huge number more hands where we have a fair spade or dia fit we will not find any other way than an x here. It is not a good idea to emphasize such a cruddy spade suit (with 2s) when we have the ability to introduce 2 cruddy suits and greatly increase our flexibility. Letting the opps meekly play 2h is just plain going to be a losing option in the long run at imps and MP.

win the spade K and play a low club toward the 7. This should give me a chance to try for 33 clubs 33 dia or the heart A onside. The exact details of play will depend mostly on how the defense proceeds.

win the club k draw trumps in 3 or 4 rounds (i hope) ending in hand and lead dia 9 intending to play lho for HonorTx (x) in diamonds

transfer to hearts but be careful before using this because a 3n bid does not have to be a balanced powerhouse so make sure your hearts are of decent quality QT98xx at least and if vul maybe a tad better.

alas poor doctor mccoy must have been imbibing too much romulan ale and his thinking was off. the key is the order in which spock opted to handle the bidding. By bidding hearts over 2d then showing the 6 bagger in spades spock was showing a hand with slam interest (with weaker hands it is best to rebid spades then introduce hearts). Mccoy failed to recognize this difference and bid out his own slam oriented hand as if it were like void Axx AKJxxxx xxx. If mccoy had realized spock was showing slam interest the very least mccoy could have done was bid 5s. Spock would have zero problems then bidding 6c now showing interest in a grand. With spock trying for 7 missing 3 aces the spade suit must be pretty darn good so mccoy should have little trouble bidding 7s (a case can be made for 6d asking for 7n with dia help but that risks being left there in a less well oiled partnership).

case 1 PASS not out of fear-- but because you want to convey to p a willingness to try 7n if they have the spade A. This means any other hand just x 7s even with zero. It is far too important to leave us a chance of making 7n to use x in any other fashion even if the situation is going to be rare. Note that our hand can be far weaker overall to make this pass (ie) void Axxxxx x Axxxxx case 2 a case can be made for treating this hand the same as hand 1. The number of hands (after a 1d bid) that would meet the requirements for a try for 7n can probably be counted using no more than your fingers and toes. This extremely low % means it is not mathematically worth using this way and IMO pass here would merely mean too weak to x 7s and X is a plain old panalty x (this is what i would choose whatever top club your partnership leads looking for count). a direct bid of 7n in either case is just a bid designed to get rid of your current partner.

if the other room is in 4h and they are going to make 5 (assuming the K is offside) while we are giving up -100 so we gain 350 or +8 imps this is becasue the defense may start club A club ruff and we will always underlead the dia A to try and get to p for a second ruff. If we take the losing finesse we are -300 vs + 450 or + 4 imps

A word from the minority report finesse If the assumptions about the opening lead are correct then taking the finesse is a poor idea. I am not convinced these assumptions are correct. Lho could easily have started with AK spades and club Kxxx and heart K and from their point of view returning a spade to shorten dummy trumps (keep declarer from setting up clubs) might be the only way to kill the club suit. There is also no strong reason to assume RHO has the club K since rho could not make a forcing pass over 5c with xx(x) in clubs and forcing pass situations are not always right (just mostly right). To me there is enough doubt plus rho not making some obvious killing overtake and switch to give me hope 5c can make and I am willing to risk the extra 4 imps by taking the finesse.

1c (2s) 3c invitational what else? if p is min we surely dont want to be in game right? 3d heck yes looking for game and showing stop 3h heres a heart stop no spde stop (might have a partial) lack of neg x round 1 makes it clear this is not a heart suit. 5c if p no spade stop than 5c should have decent play.

The opps are headed for +650 (or much more likely) + 680/1430. IMO dreaming up different ways to get to the cheapest possible sacrifice misses the point of the hand. We need to try and convince the opps to not bid 6h because we will then feel compelled to take the relatively cheap -800 (or maybe less if p is short in spades) sac in 7d. The opps have 23 hcp so they are far short of the norm for slam bidding. A direct blast to 6d may make it the most difficult for the opps because your LHO will probably not be able to use forcing pass to convince his p to bid on because he will probably be too weak (opps have 23 hcp) to want to encourage his p to bid on and his short dia (max xx) will make him leary of mirror distribution. Anything else we bid will allow the opps extra space to explore for slam via cue bids and we dont want that.

The vul sign is not designed to get you to charge like a bull. It is designed tio warn you that bidding can rapidly become dangerous to the health of your partnership. It is very difficult to find a successful vulnerable sacrifice. This means any high level bid you make to show these minors has a superb chance of backfiring and this does not even address the issue of the huge difference btn the 7 card club suit and 5 card dia suit. Since looking for a vul sacrifice is a poor idea you are best off waiting to see if there is any way your side has the power to successfully compete. It is very unlikely the hand will be passed out and you may still find your hand is quite useful if p is strong enough. PASS

P couldnt even conjure up a 3d bid. the singleton dia keeps me conservative even at IMPS. pass and hope to go plus.

absolutely make a slam try with 4c and if p bids 4d bid 4h this will let your p know not only do u have slam interest but all the side suits are controlled. If p now subsides in 4s then pass youve let your p know u need more stuff than just the dia A and a side Q. p hand is severly limited by the 2c bid so while 5 tricks seem likely i have trouble envisioning a 6th defensive trick so running from 2h x is not unreasonable. 2s is unlikley to be correct since if p had spades they could easily have bid 2s themselves vs x. We survived the 2s bid and now 4h back to us is getting the hammer from me. If p x did not mean they are near the top of their 2c bid we are rarely going to get these kinds of auctions right without further discussion.