This hand game up in a league match last week playing with Doug. 7 of a minor does not make because Doug holds the AH rather than the KC, but how would you bid the hand to make sure you are not missing a cold grand?

1C promised at least a 3 card suit.
3H was a splinter showing slam interest and at least 5 clubs
3S was a cue bid showing first or second round control
4D was RKCB with clubs set as trumps (not an ideal bid with a void I admit)
4S showed 3 (or 0) keycards

Splintering at round 1 turned out to be unnecessary since Doug had such a massive hand anyway, but I had no way of knowing that. An inverted minor response or a strong jump shift would probably have made things easier later in the bidding.

The only way I can think of exploring a grand with the void is some sort of exclusion keycard, but is there a way of playing that when it is a minor suit slam you are exploring? As a bunch of juniors, you are bound to know every slam convention under the sun so I throw it open to you...

We won the match 12-4 by the way Phil/Frazer so we are probably officially safe from relegation now Are any of you bods finishing uni in Edinburgh this year moving back to Glasgow and interested in strengthening the team?

I suppose bidding 5H over the 4s responce would show a void with Grand interest, this would make it easy for doug to sign off in 6c with his wasted values in hearts.
(Unless you thought your partner might pass it)

Its quite a tricky hand to investigate properly. For Phil and i the auction would be at 3nt far too quickly.

1s-2d
3nt-????
At this point you know your side has a double fit so slam is definite but getting to the correct one looks quite tricky.

3nt-4c (nat)
4h(1st or 2nd, club support)- 5d(cue)
5h(1st+2nd round control)-6c Knowing partner has wasted values

I may be getting a bit fanciful here though. In fact scratch that, a lot fanciful.

Btw great result David, well try to be too busy to play next time too then if you can just do that again.

Our table 4 did not have a good score so we could have done with you back! Are you both playing this Wednesday? Maybe Ricky is resting the youngsters after a long hard season justlike football managers do.

A few comments about your comments:

How do you know you have a double fit after 1S - 2D - 3NT?!
What NT do you play? I assume it's 14-16 for the bidding you suggested, which emphasises what a horrible NT range it is to play!

In your suggested auction, south is commiting to 6C without actually knowing where the Ace and King of clubs are Frazer. Remember you don't see North's hand in the real world

For the same reason, that's why I don't think I can bid 5H over 4S.

We are playing 15-17NT. Sorry but I am unable to see how this affects the bidding, i dont quite understand how it has to be 14-16 from the bidding.

Playing 4cM the only possible shapes for the 3nt bid are 4333 or 5332
The first would give you 2 minor suit fits and the second would give you a minor fit and a spade fit.

Yes i know my bidding sequence is a lot of rubbish, it was really meant to illustrate how hard this hand is to bid after 3nt whilst still keping the dream or a grand alive.It is very tricky to do.

I think having bid 5H, showing the void, partner should discard all honours in the suit including the ace (after all its allready been shown). So 5h would be a stepping stone on the way to 6c if partner held the ace. However should he bid something different he is denying any wasted values in hearts as well as 3 keycards then 7c looks great, even better if partner was kind enough to hold 4 clubs.

I can see that this wouldnt work if partner held say
AKxx
Kxx
Jxx
AKx



But it dosent cost anything either if you are allways goingto bid 6c.

I wasn't criticising Frazer, just trying to get you to think your bids through fully so that you can [cough] win the post mortem [cough] sorry - improve your system.

You couldn't be playing a 12-14 NT as, if you were, you would have rebid 2NT GF after you partner responds at the 2 level, rather than leap straight to 3NT.

I therefore assumed it must have been 14-16 you were playing and you were bidding 3NT to show a 17-19 hand. This is pretty horrible as so much room is taken up and the difference between a 17 point and a 19 point hand is huge (see below). Not so much of a problem when it specifically shows 18-19, which it must do if you are playing 15-17 (sorry I overlooked that possibilty for some reason).

I see your point now

Agreed that North's heart honours should be discounted after partner shows a void, but I think you are missing what I'm getting at. South is bidding 5D before this based on the fact that declarer has AH and 18-19 points. He could have:
AKQJ
AKQ
xxx
xxx

or

QJxx
AKQ
xxx
AKx

or some similar variation. Admittedly such holdings are a lot less likely when he has a minimum of 18 points rather than a minimum of 17 points (hence my point re 14-16 NT ) but south would still be forcing to six not knowing the wherabouts of the Ace or King of clubs.

Perhaps your thinking is that it's worth the risk that opponents won't cash their two top tricks if they have them? I guess that boils down to the same discussion we had over Alex's slam from the Junior Camrose.

Does anyone else know a suitable exclusion keycard type method for minor suit slams? Or perhaps amongst you you can create a superior auction to 6C/6D than we have so far?

It's a funny hand because the grand is never there but the fact that it could be on is enough to expose a weakness in my system that I didn't know was there. If we can't get a good auction, maybe everyone's system needs fine tuning? Or maybe it's just one of these hands that are impossible to bid.

Before Myles tells us Ill show how this hand can be bid if you were paying Keri with a 17-19 point 1nt. Not relavant but still quite interesting.

1NT=17-19
2nt=puppet to 3c
3c=completing puppet
3d=slam interest minors at least 54
3nt=both majors well held
4h=3055
5d=agreeing clubs, 2 keycards outside of hearts (4s would agree diamonds)
6c=end of story

Power Acol, playing 12-14nt offers this solution

1s=normal opener
2d=game force
2nt=15+with a 4333 pattern
3c=setting clubs as trumps asking for keycards
3h=0 or 3 (quick check will show its 3)
4h= asking for holding in hearts
5nt= AK
6c=sign off

Actually this reminds me of a possible system i was thinking about

1c=Any strong 1 suiter or 13-20 balanced with no 5cM
1d=unbalanced, no 5cM
1h/s=5 card suits
10-12pts-balanced
2 level=current fancy
2nt=21-22
and then preempts

Over 1c it would look something like
1d=show NT stregnth (1nt=13-15 1s=16-18 1h=19-20) or bid suit
1h=scramble start, no 5card suit (5 point max, now trying to find lowest playable contract)
1s=relay start (using the corect meathods im confident everything can be shown from here)
1nt=puppet to clubs (responder then may pass or bid a 5 card suit to play, weak)(not pupeting shows single suiter)
2level suits= to play
Or something similar, i havent thought it out


Due to the accuracy of Keri getting to "open" 1nt on all balanced hands from 10-20 points feels like an advantage to me.

5 card majors are not to be used in the balanced hand sections. This is beacuse they could get lost with big jump overcalls. If there is an overcall then dbl would be say values say 17+points and a suit would be a single suiter in that suit.

I asked John Matheson to comment upon these hands to see if they gave us further insight into the way they ought to be bid. So here are his comments.

"Hand 258-concentrating on Frazer and Philip's auction as I do not know the other's methods.
1S 2D
3N 4C
4D 4H
4S 5H
6D

4C=natural,equal length in minors or longer diamonds e.g.5/5,5/4,6/4,6/5 etc.
4D=natural and setting likely trump suit-see above
4H=cue,1st or 2nd
4S=cue,1st or 2nd
5H=cue,1st ,and North can see it is a void. Looking at the South hand he knows that North must have A or K of clubs to cooperate in a slam adventure missing AKQ D's,QJ C's
6D=clear that AK hearts are not what is required for a grand."

So a correct bidding sequence, yeah!

(But wait this dosent help David, it just shows im silly, hmmmm...)

Here's my strong club relay system in action

1C (16+) 2S (5+5+ minors)
2NT (relay) 3S (3055)
4C (relay) 4S (7 slam points A = 3 K = 2 Q = 1)
4NT (relay) 5C (0/3 in diamonds)
5D (relay) 5S 1/2 in clubs, 0/3 in spades)
6C end