how to best try for slam

[msjennifer]

deleted as it was for a different post.

[msjennifer]

I held the following hand this Monday and was unsure how to proceed

 

[hv=pc=n&w=sak7haj9432d82cqj&d=e&v=n&b=2&a=1cp1hp2hp]133|200[/hv]

 

I went for 3♣ (promising Q+ in ♣, kind of Help-suit-Gametry), which is forcing for us and asks Partner to bid 4♥ with good support in clubs and settle for 3♥ otherwise.

After my partner was able to bid 4♥ I liked my hand even more because my QJ♣ greatly improved in value.

I followed it up with 4♠ after which Partner unfortunately cued with 5♣ (I think he should have skipped the club cue in favor for the much more valuable ♦-cue. He almost is marked with a club control for the bidding so far, isn't he?)

Now I'm none the wiser and lack a bid somehow.

Should I have started differently? How would you have proceeded? Is trying for 6 too ambitious anyway?

 

 

regard

Janis

 

5 C shows a control in clubs.You have cue bid in spades showing an ambition of small slam ,so now just bid 5H denying a control in diamonds.

[miamijd]

Incidentally, playing 5 of a major is an abomination to be avoided at all costs. The only time you should play 5 of a major is when you determine you have the strength and controls for slam but then you use key-card and find out you lack two keys. Cue-bidding needs to be done at the three and four levels, not the five level. Fred Gitelman has an excellent series of articles on that.

 

Cheers,

Mike

[pescetom]

I agree that with 18-19, one tries for game by bidding it. Indeed, my view is that many shapely hands with fewer values should also simply blast. There is a real benefit from not telling the opps how to defend and, especially, how to choose an opening lead.

 

That said, there are still going to be hands on which one ought to seek some additional information to decide on game or partscore. Many of these will possess around 15-16 hcp, and some will possess as few as 14 or so. These will be hands on which opener has shape and the key will be the combined playability of the side suit(s). Blasting is simply rolling the dice, since on these hands the opening lead usually is irrelevant. Is our AJxx suit facing xxx? Not good. Is it facing Qx? Good, and so on.

 

Imo, the need to find a side 4 card major isn't that critical, and indeed help suit tries can help there anyway

 

 

1S 2S 3H 4H...bingo, admittedly not when responder has xxxx in hearts, but he won't accept the try with that.

 

Similarly in spades: 1H 2H 2S 3S

 

Finding the side 4-4 fit is more important, in any event, in slam bidding, but I'd happily trade you every slam you successfully reach, and I don't, after 1M 2M for a used bus token (as I think Kaplan once said in analogous circumstances). It's not as if using hsgt's eliminates trying for slam on the rare hand where that makes sense, even if your gadget offers more precision. You may have a marginal gain on very low frequency occurrences, but the cost is that you are either overbidding, by blasting, to bad games or missing good games because you don't want to risk getting too high, and have no try available.

 

These are, of course, merely opinions, and maybe you find that the frequencies are other than I see them as being, or maybe your judgment on blasting or not is so good that you don't really need gametries. However, I did find it odd that you appear to think that tries only arise when opener is 5332. If that is indeed your experience, then I agree you appear to have no need for them.

 

My own view is that tries are especially useful when opener is 5-4, and indeed 5431 is probably the most important shape, since values opposite the stiff are usually wasted. It is, of course, possible to play two-way tries.

 

 

That makes sense, thanks. It's not that we thought tries only arise when opener is 5332, but after switching to 1NT for 5332 and 5422 the reduction in tries seemed more extreme than the reduction in all 1M openings or even in all 15-17 1M openings would justify, so our hunch was that maybe we had the wrong tool for the hands and opportunities we had left. But I follow your argument that tries can still work well when investigating game with mid-range unbalanced hands. We'll reinstate them for 6 months and see how it goes.

[JanisW]

For everybody who is curious, here is Partners hand

 

[hv=pc=n&e=s62ht875daj2cak42]133|100[/hv]

 

hearts split 2-1 and clubs no worse than 5-2 so 6♥ was an easy make

[Caitlynne]

Last question first …

No, I think trying for slam is correct. My rule of thumb is this: if I can imagine a perfect minimum that fits partner's bidding and make a slam virtually cold, I make a try for slam. I can imagine partner holding xx, Kxxx, AKx, Kxxx and that is a pedestrian minimum opening bid that is cold for 6H unless QTx of hearts is with LHO, an 11% chance.

 

I think your slam try by showing club values is reasonable, as it will make partner value a good club holding. However, I think I would like to make partner's cue bidding life easier, so I start with 2S. Now, with the example minimum I gave, partner has it easy:

 

1C - 1H

2H - 2S

3D - 3S

4C - 4S

5D - 6H

Pass

[miamijd]

Not sure you're going to get to slam on this one. You can start with a cue of 2S or 2NT (some play 2NT shows spades and 2S shows shortness), but when partner retreats to 3H (which he should, as he has a minimum), you are pretty much stuck bidding 4H.