rogerclee

1) 8 clubs 2) I would pass, and I didn't consider bidding 3C the previous round. The smallest change to make me double would be the jack of hearts. I'm tanking on the ten, but that's also possible.

I see a lot of people making combinations of the statements 1) Exclusion is easy to mess up. 2) Exclusion does not come up frequently enough to justify playing it. FWIW I think both are untrue. I have never messed up exclusion in my life, and the last three times it came up for me were all in pickup partnerships where we each assumed the other was playing 3014 exclusion without discussion. I know this may not be a typical experience, given that I generally play with young and experienced players, but I'm just saying my impression of the convention is very positive, and that it comes up a lot. That said I know someone who recently thought 1S X 5D was exclusion keycard. If you are one of these kinds of people then it's a different matter.

One could also argue that if you pass then you don't belong in this part of the forum.

Someone who is so sure he is right about a bidding problem that he dismisses the second alternative as "showing a lack of respect for the game" is disrespecting the game himself.

If I were going to open 1N at one form of scoring and 1D at the other, I would definitely go the other way.

3S

First of all if partner has no game interest we will do better to superaccept, since we will declare it from the right side. Second your honor structure outside of diamonds is just as important as your diamond holding. We have prime cards, good for either making slam or taking 9 tricks in 3N. Third, having 3 diamonds is much better than having 2.

I would have superaccepted.

Pass, there is no alternative.

Pretty obvious pass to me, it would not surprise me at all for 2H to turn a plus into a minus.

agree

I play 3H shows a game forcing club raise with heart shortness (this should be good enough even opposite a passed hand). Seems like a good description to me.

4S is an infinitely better bid than 4N.

[hv=d=e&v=e&n=stxxhxdkqjxxxcakq&s=saj86xxhqt9xdxxcx]133|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv] P 2S P 4S AP Lead: ♣4, RHO following with the ♣9 (UDCA). If you play a heart off dummy RHO flies ♥K and plays another club. Edit: Opps play precision and open all 11's.

To play, your most common hand type is a running suit with a heart stopper.

lol

Oh I forgot about the spade loser lol. Whatever, this theory still applies. We are playing for KJxx onside (low to T) vs Jxx offside (low to Q), which is close in percentage. What is the spade count? If LHO is singleton and I think he has only 2 clubs (I will play K then A) I will play low to the ten, otherwise low to the Q.

Cashing the CA first seems like a good play, even if RHO is very good/tricky. If he plays one of QJT I can't believe in practice it's good to play on hearts rather than try to duck a club into RHO.

There is no alternative to pass.

I would just pass even though it could be wrong.

4H, keeps us a level lower, and if we bid slam, I want to make it not completely obvious that a heart lead is right. BTW I play this does not promise a heart control, but even if it did, I would bid 4H anyway.

Your partner has another bid, you know.

Pass, we are balanced with 6 trumps and don't have a great hand and it's the 5 level.

I wonder if 4NT directly should just be 6-key RKC, leaving 4H for something else, such as "answer keys only if you have first or second round control of hearts" (starting with 4NT as first step with heart control, but bidding 4S without). I don't think so because 6-key RKC is most helpful when you have a double fit and both of you have length, but that is not really the case here. The person trying for slam could easily be doing it based on shortness in the second suit and long trumps, in which case he might not even care about the king in the second suit let alone the queen.

Josh makes sense.