Shall you move?

[Hanoi5]

♠JT8xx

♥T8x

♦J

♣AQJx

 

Imp's, red vs white, partner opens 2NT in 4th seat:

 

P-2NT

3♥-4♠

???

 

4♠ is a super-accept, showing a 4-card fit.

 

If the 2NT shows 20-21, do you continue?

 

If the 2NT shows 21-23, do you continue?

[the hog]

Yes, I would bid 5C. Over 5D I bid 5S, having already suggested my interest.

[S2000magic]

With a 20-21 HCP 2NT, we should be safe at the 5 level, so I'd bid 4♣.

 

With a 21-23 HCP 2NT, we're almost guaranteed to make 6♠, so I'd bid 4♣ more eagerly.

[dkham]

I like the idea of bidding 5♣ then 5♠ for a modest slam invite. But still a bit worried we could get to 6♠ off two keycards, or off 1 keycard and the queen of trumps.

[Zelandakh]

4♠ is a super-accept, showing a 4-card fit.

 

If the 2NT shows 20-21, do you continue?

 

If the 2NT shows 21-23, do you continue?

What other super-accept options did partner have here? Does 4♠ only show a 4th spade or is there also, for example, a control range shown and/or a denial of concentrated values in a side suit?

 

 

With a 20-21 HCP 2NT, we should be safe at the 5 level, so I'd bid 4♣.

 

With a 21-23 HCP 2NT, we're almost guaranteed to make 6♠, so I'd bid 4♣ more eagerly.

Bidding 4♣ (Gerber?!) after partner bids 4♠ seems like an excellent way to make sure we have a pure guess.

[Hanoi5]

So... when did they approve insufficient bids?

[mr1303]

I might have a word with partner to suggest that he makes a cue-bid with a super-accept rather than jumping to 4S.

 

5C now opposite either hand.

[Statto]

I'll buck the trend and stay. I'm bound to have some values when partner opens in 4th street, though they are probably worried that I will pass out below game. I think I need a bit more to press on.

[kenrexford]

If you show a cov when you supeaccept, the one cov you cannot show without killing the retransfer if the one under suit. So using that method partner would have a cov in hearts, fwiw.

[mcphee]

4S Just what you wanted to hear, we make a move and discover no H control resting in 5. They lead H from Kx and collect a ruff to beat us 1. I am making a note now to change this super accept method. I will make a try willing to be punished for my vision in both cases.

[Cyberyeti]

We actually superaccept in several ways, 2N-3♥-3N and 2N-3♥-4♠ show bad/good 4 card raises, new suits show a good 5 in that suit and 3 to at least one top honour in partner's, so at least I'd know whether partner is bad or good.

 

I'd be tempted with a poor spade suit to bid 3♣ over 2N as we have methods to disentangle this most of the time, and I can bid a natural 4 card 4♣ in most of the sequences I need to.

 

After I hear the 4♠ in your sequence, KQxx, AKx, Axxx, Kx is plenty for a slam and sub minimium, so I'll certainly give it a look, but I can't see how I can find out whether he has a suitable hand at this level. I suspect I have to either use Blackwood and bid it if we're not missing 2 keycards or one + Q♠, bid 5♠, or settle for 4. Cue bidding 5♣ doesn't help much as it's then impossible to find out that we're missing too many top trumps.

 

How you bid it on the hand above, but not on AKQx, KJxx, AKx, xx I have no idea.

[mikeh]

We are playing very bad methods, as others have observed.....here we are, in potential slam auction, voluntarily depriving ourselves of an entire level of bidding.

 

Personally, I think 3N as a super-accept denying the club A, is reasonable, with 4 level cues always showing any missing lower Aces.....4♦ would show, for example, both minor Aces and deny the heart A. Over 3N, we'd bid 4♣ and partner can show his red suit controls....if he bid 4♥, denying a diamond control, we'd surely be very, very interested in slam. If he bid 4♦, our 4♠ call would show concern about hearts.

 

 

As if is we have to guess. Slam bidding is unlike game bidding....being red doesn't make slam more attractive, as it would with game.

 

My main concern is that I am not at all sure that we can reach slam intelligently.

 

I clearly cannot keycard.

 

My try would have to be 5♣ and now I can bid 5♠ as a mild slam try, but not a very informative slam try. Isn't there a risk that partner, hearing 5♠ over 5red, will think that I am worried about the other red?

 

Say he bids 5♦...now my heart holding is a real issue and I want my 5♠ to bring that into focus. But if he bids 5♥, I'm still not worth a slam all by myself, so my 5♠ would seem to bring diamonds into focus...which isn't my concern at all.

 

In addition, especially if playing a 20-21 2N (as I do), we are verging on needing magic cards. Personally, I upgrade control-rich 21's into my 2♣ opener.....I woudn't hold AKxx AKxx Ax Kxx, and I wouldn't expect my partner to either...that's closer to 23 than it is to 21. And slam is far from cold opposite that (well, I was a bit careful with the shape ;) )

 

Having said all that, I can't bring myself to pass. I will bid 5♣ and then 5♠. It may well be that partner will mis-evaluate if he has the heart A and not the diamond A.

 

Btw, in these auctions, I would expect cuebidding to show 1st round controls...my take on this is that one should bid 2nd and 1st in order of economy when below game, but that if the first cue bid is above game, we need to show 1st round controls (and almost always we need to change our bidding methods, since a good constructive method should allow for cues below game in almost all scenarios).

[gnasher]

We are playing very bad methods, as others have observed.....here we are, in potential slam auction, voluntarily depriving ourselves of an entire level of bidding.

 

Personally, I think 3N as a super-accept denying the club A, is reasonable, with 4 level cues always showing any missing lower Aces.....4♦ would show, for example, both minor Aces and deny the heart A. Over 3N, we'd bid 4♣ and partner can show his red suit controls....if he bid 4♥, denying a diamond control, we'd surely be very, very interested in slam. If he bid 4♦, our 4♠ call would show concern about hearts.

I think those methods are quite bad too, but in a different way. We're usually going to be playing this hand in game, in which case it would be better not to have told the opponents anything about opener's hand. Furthermore, the knowledge of exactly which aces are held by opener is rarely crucial to the slam decision. I think it's much better if opener always breaks to 3NT, or perhaps 3NT with a minimum and 4♣ with a maximum.

[han]

I agree with those disliking the methods. I also agree with mikeh that it is a bit of a guess now, we don't have room to find out if our hands fit. Had partner bid 3NT or 4C, we could have splintered with 5D to investigate slam more intelligently. (imo one shouldn't play exclusion after 2NT openings.)

 

But I am a quite a bit more optimistic than mikeh is. We are verging on needing perfect cards? I don't think so. In fact, I think slam is already more than 50% (especially after a blind auction) and would therefore rather bid 6S than pass.

 

However, there is no need to blast and risk being off two keycards. I will bid RKC (I don't understand why we cannot keycard mikeh) followed by 6S if we have enough. It is of course possible that we are missing the A-K of hearts, but even if so they haven't led them yet, and partner's hearts may go on our clubs. The cuebidding route makes this less likely, and doesn't help us much anyway. And by going that round, we could easily be missing 2 aces.

 

By the way, it is all very well to say that a cuebid here should promise a first round control, but what if we have something like Kxxxx Jxx x KQJx instead? And how are we going to find out if we miss a club control if neither of us was allowed to cue the king of hearts?

 

I also think that if we bid 5C and partner bids 5H (yay!) then we should certainly bid 6S. One reason is that our chances of making slam have gone up, the other is that if we are just going to make a nondescriptive slam try we should bid 5S instead of 5C. I don't see how 5C can help partner if after 5D and 5H we'll both bid 5S. 5H is much better for us than 5D.