PhilKing

I might be being a bit thick but can't I just cash a third heart and run the jack of spades? After cashing the fourth heart (my third loser), East has to give me an eighth trick cheaply and I can now just establish a ninth. Slight fly in the ointment - I have to throw a spade on the last heart, so East can exit a club upon winning a spade honour, but it still looks like a near claimer.

On reflection I think partner is looking for a doubleton spade, so that we can ruff out the spade for the 13th trick. But whatever he is after I don't have it. I don't want to be in a grand on 4-3 spades and a heart break. It's a sign off regardless. Personally, I like the 6♥ bid (I think it should be defined as a punt with a seventh heart) and would bid 5NT with the heart queen no king.

Anyway, I don't really buy the argument than partner has no diamond control (with no diamond ace and no heart honour, partner needed a cue from us). There are other hands where we just belong on 6NT. And 4♦ was not doubled, so we are not getting a diamond lead even close to all the time when that is the killer.

Why can't he have the diamond queen?

I sign off in 6NT. Standard spot. Partner is making a last train. He can count 12 tricks in 6NT opposite our heart queen (haha) and is looking for an extras heart or the spade queen, neither or which we have. We could accept with AKxxxxxx AKQxxxx or the spade queen.

. The idea, as I heard it, just applied to the sequence 1♥-(3♠), where 4♣ is used to show a good heart raise and 4♠ to show a one-suited slam try in clubs. But I also like to use it where hearts is a new suit (as described above, and also after 1NT-3♠) and also in some fairly weird spots such as 2♠-Dble-P-4♣. It is less useful if partner has opened 1♠, since you can make a cue bid below the level of game. However, I still think it's a winner after 1♠-3♥, for instance, since the good spade raises are way more common (and important) than the club hands.

My guess is that 1 and 2 are the wrong way round, and 3 and 4 are definitely the wrong way around.

The brutal truth is that anyone who signs off in 3♠ (and 3♦ is only a little better) does not know how to construct or evaluate a hand. Starting with basic evaluation - do you seriously want four cover cards to accept a game try here? But when one considers a typical hand for 3♣: ♠Axxxx ♥AQx ♦x ♣AJ9x, if we sign off, partner will think that we have no faith in his dummy play. And on this layout we had four covers - the club ten gives us a decent shot at eleven tricks.

I prefer double to 3♠ by a large margin.

FWIW, one of my regular teammates (Gunnar Hallberg) generally passes with 4441 and 12-13 points in first and second set. The results have been mixed ...

We went down this road some time ago. Mike and I called you out for a high stakes challenge at ANY stake with you being allowed to play with any partner in the world. And amazingly, you did not take up the offer.

I think 4♣ on the second round shows this hand pretty accurately indicating: a) Very strong hand b) Control in clubs c) Too distributional for a double

Only surprising if one somehow does not realise that the points were theoretical rather than pertaining to the actual layout. The point is that actions taken by the opponents are far from irrelevant and under certain circumstances the slam could be odds on.

On the face of it slam is rather poor so it is widely assumed that bidding 6♥ is a mistake. However, slam bidding is just not always that simple. Say the auction starts 1♥-(2♠)-3♠ it's easy to see how the auction can get a little out of control and no pair can get every hand right - there will always be some guesswork involved (for instance, give West the club jack and slam is now pretty reasonable). And as discussed above, slam is not as bad as some people seem to think unless you don't know how to handle the clubs, which in isolation are a huge favourite to play for one loser and with a decent count on the opponent's distribution may become a certainty. But the real clincher is that it might have been correct to bid slam - we cannot tell without seeing the whole hand and there is a greater than zero chance that Phil007 has overlooked a subtle inferences. Imagine the auction at some tables started 1♥-(2♠ weak)-3♠-(pass). What inference might we draw from South's pass? The inference is that South has a poor holding in hearts - probably Kx. And besides, the weak jump makes the finesse a solid favourite from the outset. But the bottom line is that it is futile to calculate the percentages for being in slam without considering the whole picture. The very top players tend to be pretty aggressive in the slam zone and I think that some of them would be in slam on this deal.

K2 and K7 too, but that's it, I think.