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You must be careful if west plays another ♦ at the second trick. After ruffing it and drawing all of the trumps you can only get back into the hand by ruffing 2 more ♦. In this case you don´t have any ♦ left for the squeeze. So what you have to do is to draw only 1 round of trumps with the king. Then 3 rounds of ♠ and ruffing it on north. Then draw the last trump, ruff a ♠, ruff a diamond, play all of the ♣. You can only win if west has the ♥K and exactly 1 ♣.

West promises 8 points with his contra. In this respect, Osts 4 spade bid is absolutely understandable. An alternative is highest 3 SA. In that sense, not East but West is too aggressive in the board.

Last year I was called as a TD. After playing a board they tried to put their cards back. At this moment 1 player noticed that there were already cards in his box cause he took the cards from the wrong board. So you´re really fast to notice the problem after trick 3.

This is a 50% slam. So it makes no sense thinking about ist.

The double in this situation means 2 things: - I ve 1 or 2 defence tricks (more defense tricks are unrealistic with a weak hand). - I m not interested (to defend) in 5 ♠ Because of reason 2 the 3♠ bidder should always double in this situation, when he has 1 or more Defense tricks. So at MP passing the double is clear. At IMPs it is much more difficult. Maybe we can manage 5 ♠. Maybe partner doubled with only 1 defense trick and it is very ambiguous, if I ve 0 (worst case), 1, 2 or even more defense tricks, especially if partner has more than a single ♥. Yes: It would be better to bid 4 ♥ the round before. Then I could pass the double even at IMPs with a clear conscience.

Difficult to say what 5 ♣ means especially without knowing your system. Do you play inverted in this situation? How many diamonds shows the 1♦ bid and how many diamonds do you have after the 2♦ bid? I think, your partner has at least 1 way to show his suit in a forcing way, but he doesn t choose such a way. Why? Exclusion doesn t seem realistic cause you ve only one ♣ and opps don t bid ♣. But I know a premier league board from 2 world class player where one player psychs exclusion KC to prevent an attack in this suit and the other player doesn t believe it because of his own void in this suit. The resulting 2-0 fit wasn t a big success. Maybe your partner tries the same thing. But that s difficult to say without knowing your system and your partner*. If he wants to play 5 ♣ he should bid easier next time.

I think you must consider what would happen next. I´d expect, opps play only 1♣ when West hast real clubs. Otherwise he would XX. So we only play 1♣ if there´s a 5card club behind me. But my clubs are so good that I´ll get 3 tricks most of the time. It is very close if 1♣x is a good contract or not. passing against bidding 1:1 When I pass 1♣ partner would attack clubs. That are good news. When I bid 1♦ he would attack diamonds. passing against bidding 2:1 When I pass 1♣, partner might think that I ve much more defense against other contracts. After a XX he might double any other contract bid by the opps. I don t know what to do if the bidding goes 1♣-X-p-p- XX-p-1♠-p p-X-p-? So passing against bidding 2:2 1♦ might be a disaster or might be good. Very difficult to see. passing against bidding 3:3 Against weak opps, which might play 1♣ X without real Clubs on West, I´d pass. Against better opps I´d bid. Why? I think the disadvantage that partner would attack diamonds is not a big problem. First of all Partner might have a good diamond holding for an attack. Secondly when opps bid after 1♦ I´d expect that most of the time I must attack.

If you put 1 club to the hearts, you only make 11 tricks. I ve no bidding methods to distinguish a 4243 distribution from a 4342 distribution during the bidding. West has the perfect distribution and also perfect values. Otherwise even 5 diamond needn t be safe. It is impossible to find every 23p slam.

I d bid 4 hearts at the first round. Maybe we can make 4 hearts maybe the opps can make game, maybe both. Now I heard the most positiv answer from partner (with my 5 card support poor suit is better than good suit). It is very, very difficult to imagine a hand without good game chances. Even with Jx,Qxxxxx,Qxx,QJ, opps must play clubs before you play spades. If partner has the ace of hearts, you have 9,5 tricks. Most of the time, partner should be able, to make more than 0,5 tricks with is remaining 3-5 points. So I think 12 or even 13 tricks are much more likely than only 9. My stomach would say: Most of the time, I´ll make 10 or 11 tricks, sometimes 12 or even 13 and sometimes only 9 tricks. Most of the time when I make only 9 tricks, 4 hearts is a good contract, but no impass/expass/... works. Most of the time partner has a second suit and/or a void when we can make 12 or 13 tricks. But I cannot see how you can find out this. 3S should ask for a cue which isn t very helpful. So from my point of view 4♥ is the only possible bid. Everything else doesn t make sense.

You ve control in all 4 suits. And with the diamond shortness you should have enough for 6 clubs if you have all but one KC. I expect that the decision between 5 or 6 would be very easy if you have asked partner for aces. You ve written, that 4 ♣ is forcing. I think with 4 ♣ you wanna ask for cues. Cause partner bids 5 ♣ it seems that partner has no ♥ and ♠ control. So a pass might be obvious. But there are players which don´t cue with absolutly minimum. If your partner is one of those players you have a problem now. But nevertheless your problem is self-made. Everything would be easier if you can ask for aces with 4♣ or 4♦.

Partner doesn t bid 3 NT. So he s either to weak for 3NT or he has no heart values. So I think, the possibility that either 4 spades or 4 hearts or both have a good chance, is very high. I think at IMPs bidding is clear cut. At MP passing might be successful but I would bid, too. I´d thank east for the chance to show a weak 4 spade bid now. It would be very much more difficult, if east bid 4 hearts directly. Partner might think that I ve more defense when opps bid 5 hearts after a direct 4 spade bid.

I think 6 spade is the best contract. It is better if it s played by north. But I think it s impossible to reach it.

Partner has no inviting hand if we play hearts. He doesn t know that I ve a very good hand for this vulerable. And he must have a very good hand to double 3NT and 5 diamonds. So he must be very short in hearts otherwise he´d bit something else than 2 hearts. The difficulty is that I still don t know what to lead. Against 3NT I would lead a spade. But against 5 diamond I don t know if he wants a heart ruff or not. I think a spade attack might be the best. But partner can missunderstand a spade 10 attack. So maybe a heart attack is better.

A striped tail ape double might work here. But west has no indication that NS bid slam or that slam is even possible. The diamond king seems to be a trick and maybe the queen of hearts or the jack of diamond. And west doesn t know, that east has absolutly no Defense trick. If east had the jack of hearts and/or the diamond figures are onside, slam is not possible most of the time.

Before start playing clubs a finesse wins against 3-2 and the queen onside and 4-1 with single queen => 40% Dropping wins against single or double queen. => 33% Am I right? Without playing a false card, the 10 would be single or double from Q10. If the 10 is single, you have no chance to develop the clubs without loosing any trick. If the 10 is from Q10, you should drop. So you should think about the propablity of a false card and that is very difficult. Against middle range player I would drop. The difference between 40 and 33% is smaller than the probability of a false card. I think beginner plays false cards more often than middle range player. But again the difference between 40 and 33% is smaller than the probability of a false card in a right situation. In my opinion a very good player might play the queen from Q10 and false card from 10x. So maybe finessing is better. But the false card from Q10 has 3 disadvantages: 1st) It is not clear from the bidding, that South has only 2 clubs. So a false card disclaims the chance that South finesse at the second club trick when they have a 9 card fit. 2nd) Weak player ignore false cards. A weak player wouldn t think about finessing to the 9 if you false card the queen. 3rd) Middle range player would finesse to the queen although you played the 10 from Q10 and doesn t find the play to the 9 every time. So I would only finesse against a very good player if the good player knows that I am a good player. So it is very easy: If a very good player doesn t know me, I can drop. And if he knows me, he knows that I m not a good player. So I can drop again. ulgy horrible hopeless life version

You need 4 spade tricks Spade ace, spade to the king and a ruff wins against - spade 3-3 (35%) - queen doubl (16,3%) - queen single (2,3%) = 53,6% So it is better than any kind of Finesse. But the propabilities may change a little bit because of the bidding.

OK, rule 1 is not guilty if partner described his hand exactly. But I think it is a bad idea to pass with a strong hand if partner is nearly unlimited like here. In this situation South acts on the assumption that North has the weak alternative. So South pass after 3 diamonds shows a hand between 0 and more than 12 points. This shows the problem of your agreement. If you pass with the strong hand you can miss a game or either slam or grand slam. But bidding with the north hand might be a fiasco, too, if south has nothing. Sometimes you re in such a situation after opponents barrage. But here it is you re own barrage that makes your life difficult. So I appeal to you to bid with strong hands in these situations if partner is nearly unlimited. And your strong alternatives in your multi should be strong enough that you have no problem to bid once more. That s the reason why it is for example a good idea to put only weak and strong alternatives to a micheals cue and not intermediate ones, too.

Interesting multi. I think you can get trouble if partner wants to bid something different than 2 hearts. But maybe it s not a good idea to barrage with Kxxx,Dxxx,xxx,xxx after partners 2K multi, when partner can have many different strong hands.

1st) If you mix strong and weak hands in one bid (here 2K multi, but there are much more examples), you mustn´t pass at your next bid if you have the strong hand. 2nd) It is always a risk to open a strong undefined hand. The bidding might be at very high level, when you have the first chance to describe your hand. So you should really think about the kind of strong hands you want to involve in your multi. 3rd) One reason not to open strong hands on 1st level is that you fear a pass out when game is cold. Such a hand has a realistic game chance against a 3 to 5 points partner. At this board your broke each of this 3 little rules.

Let s look at ArtK78 example hands. You can see that 10 tricks are the maximum if you change the clubs and the diamonds. Because I´ve much more cards in clubs than in diamond, the likelihood of a diamond shortness is lower than a club shortness. So I expect most of the time we´ll make 10 or 11 tricks. Certainly there´s the possibility of making 12 tricks, but an unlucky expert loses the forth diamond trick to the queen of hearts when he has x,Akxxxxx,xxxx,x. So even 4H aren´t safe. I´d expect that the average number of tricks is below 11. So a slam try seems to be a bad idea.

West 4 Sp bid is not good. A Michaels Cue should be either weak or strong, especially at this vulnerable. A weak Michaels Cue is very, very much more often than a strong one. With a weak cue partner normally has 0-1 Defense tricks. So with Wests hand I m sure that the opps game chances are about 99%. To beat a slam partner needs either the ass of hearts or he has a defense trick and we get a spade trick. And sometimes slam is made nevertheless when slam depends from the attack. So the slam chances for the opps are very good. If East has the worst possible hand (xxxxx,Xxxxx,xx,x) we only loose 4.5 tricks. But then slam is very very likely except partner has a heart trick and we get the spade trick, too. So 6 spade is mostly a good defense against slam AND game. There might be different strategies for west. You can bid the spades slow and decide to bid 6 spade later. But against good opps I m worried about a possible grand slam. Than a slow 6 spade bid might assist the opps in reaching the Grand. So I would prefer to bid 6 spade as wests first bid. And if East has a strong Cue against west´s expectations, 6 spade might be a good contract, too. At this hand advanced opps should reach 6 clubs or diamonds after the 4 Spade bid. The main reason for missing the slam are opps missing agreements against Michaels.

I think east made to big failures. The 1Sp bid is very bad and the 6 NT is criminal. There s so much bidding room. Why does he jump to 6 NT? East´s 4H bid is ok. But with 3 spades after the 1Sp bid it is not my first choice. After the 4 heart jump you ve no chance to find a possible spade contract. But it is not so easy to find a better bid instead of 4H.

I don t know what 2C means in your system. If you play 2C as partieforcing, then partners pass is extremly criminal. If you play 2C as semiforc or partieforc, then partners pass is criminal, too. Even if you play 2C only as semiforcing, partners pass is criminal, too. A semiforcing hand means that I fear a passout if I open at 1st level. From this it follows that a 2C hand is a hand with good game chances against positiv 0-5P hands. I don t know how do you define a positiv 0-5P hand. But I cannot imagine that some one defines a 4 card support with a single and 3 points as a negativ 0-5P hand. But maybe your partner has a different opinion. I m lucky that I ve a different partner.

There might be hands to force partner with the 3 and 5 spades cuebid. But I cannot imagine any hand where partner needs a 6 or 7 spade cuebid (especially the 7 spade cue). If partner wants to play 7 NT, he can bid it without the Cues. So I think, wests opening is a psych and partner has lots of spades. Therefore I would pass 6 spades. The other possible reason is, that partner is a manic gambler. In such a case he has 13 tricks and wants to force a (re)contra. In my opinion a psych is more likely than such crazy bidding from partner.

To answer your question there are several questions about your system. Do you ve got a weak opening with both majors? Do you ve got a weak answer on 1 diamonds showing both majors? What´s the difference between 2 clubs and 2 hearts? How many diamonds shows your opening bid? What would partner bid with no diamonds and 3-4 points? If you have no way to distinguish between 9 to 11- points on the one hand and 4-6p on the other and between 55 and 54 in the majors, then there s no way decide between passing, inviting and bidding game (you re sitting in the city hall). At my system, partner would show 55, around 10points and forget to open the hand. So I would bid 4 hearts.