[thepossum]

Hi all

I was very tempted to bid to 7 on this but thought there were too many weak points and ended up in 6+1. I also was unsure about my 6 level cue bid - is it defined? I was trying to get more information after partner's 6C (Queen response). I get a bit lost in RKCB sometimes after being brought up on standard Blackwood. Unusually on this hand I decided not to bid a 2C game force to try to give more room for exploration

---

Edit Just fixed an erroneous tooltip on my diagram. Hope everyone understood the bids.Sorry


Please can you explain if there are better ways to bid and how to best evaluate slams in this hand. 7NT was also an option but I thought we were light on points and possibly too many losers without more advanced cue bidding for grand in hearts or NT, although after getting the Ace,King and long clubs opposite I considered it

regards P

PS I almost dont need an answer since my sim gives grand on 96.9% of hands but I would appreciate advice on the bidding please.

[Tramticket]

Partner's 4♥ bid has not made it easy. Was there nothing more helpful that partner could bid? (e.g. 3♠ or 4♦ would be cue bids for us).

So far you know that partner has ♣AK and ♥Q for the 2-over-1 bid. Partner has forced to game, so presumably has something more. This might be extra length in clubs - which will provide discards - or at least one of the missing kings. You are very close to being able to count 13 tricks, but partner could have (say) ♠873 ♥Q2 ♦KJ94 ♣AK42, with the grand needing a finesse.

Your 6♦ bid is clearly inviting Grand Slam and is a reasonable choice since you can't quite count thirteen tricks.

[Stephen Tu]

You should specify in your posts whether you are trying to learn the best sequence opposite a good adv/expert human partner, or trying to learn what to do with a hopeless (in slam bidding anyway) robot partner, or both. These are two entirely different scenarios. With a human expert you can have an intelligent auction. Opposite a robot you have to guess. From your description of the bids it looks like a robot auction.

Opposite robot:

• Robots don't know when to cue bid. Over 3H (probably bad bid, discussed below), it should cue bid rather than just bidding 4H. Then you would know whether e.g. K of spades is missing.
• After 6c showing KC, 6d *ought* to ask for diamond king for grand IMO. But it isn't programmed that way, it just shows the ace and is totally random/useless.
• Thus you have to guess. You know partner has CAK and HQ. He must have something else for his 2/1. If it is SK you are laydown. If it is DK and CJ you are laydown. AKJxx of clubs is enough. If DK and club length you are good if can establish 5th club by ruffing. If CT and length the CJ might come down. Worst case is something like Jxx Qxx QJx AKxx. But mostly you should have good play so you probably just have to guess to bid 7.

Opposite human expert:
Previous auction would have revealed whether partner has spade k etc. before blackwood, so there is less guessing involved. Also, 3H is probably not optimal bid. 3H sets trumps, and probably shouldn't be done on a hand like this. You kind of want to hear more from partner, like if he has extra club length. Partner can have singleton/doubleton/void in hearts, where you make 7 in clubs, but only 6 in hearts since you can ruff out the Q. (or 6 in clubs, 5 in hearts, if some extra loser somewhere). So playing 2/1, just bid 2H, there's no particular reason have to jump now. This can also perhaps elicit 3h rather than 4h and you can get some cues in before blkwood.

Mostly human experts use 3H to show solid hearts, or perhaps solid missing the ace (KQJTxx), because when there are holes, slam in another denomination might be better. You can always bid 2H then 3H and not miss anything since you are playing 2/1 and partner is not going to drop you in 2h or in 3H like what could happen in especially older Acol.

[FelicityR]

A human partner may be able to work this out, but a computer less so, I feel. You are missing a number of keycards in all the suits, and both the 3♥ and 4♥ bids have taken up valuable bidding space. I am in agreement with Mr Tu that the jump to 3♥ should show a solid suit, not one that might have a finesse liability.

The point of 2/1 is that gives you a lot of extra space to assess your options below game knowing that you will be in at least game with bidding space to assess your prospects beyond game. You are not going to be any worse off rebidding 2♥ followed by 3♥ here as if partner does (surprisingly) take charge of the auction, he/she will be pleasantly surprised by your responses. Slow auctions finding out what fits where may give the opponents information too - and direct them towards a damaging lead - but your priority is to find the right contract for your side with the bidding tools you have available to you.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

the 6C bid should also deny the king of spades, a Card you most likely need for the Grand.

You habe no real way to find out, if Partner has 5 or 6 Clubs, if he has 6, you dont Need
the king of spades, with 5 claubds you only have 2 discards … Clubs may break 33, in which
case you have a 3rd discard, but more often they break 42, and then you Need the spade
fineesse.

With Kind regards
Marlowe

[thepossum]

Thanks everyone

And for the tips on how best to bid this with a human rather than a bot

I had wondered if the 3H jump crowded out information exchange, having made the decision not to rush with a 2C. I'm used to making a jump, reverse or different suit to show a strong hand like this but realise the 3H may have wasted some space.

I appreciate all the tips but missing two kings and a few losers I didn't quite have the confidence to go to 7 unlinke a few players. Maybe the lower cue bid options are not available with the bot and maybe the bot interpreted my 6D as a grand slam invite and decided against it. Sometimes I am not so cautious and on another day I would have bid 7

Remarkably 6h+1 was a zero IMP score with just a few bidding grand and a few not making 6+1 (EDIT eg bidding game), so the scoring wasnt disastrous

[P_Marlowe]

 thepossum, on 2019-August-12, 04:13, said:

Thanks everyone

And for the tips on how best to bid this with a human rather than a bot

I had wondered if the 3H jump crowded out information exchange, having made the decision not to rush with a 2C. I'm used to making a jump, reverse or different suit to show a strong hand like this but realise the 3H may have wasted some space.

I appreciate all the tips but missing two kings and a few losers I didn't quite have the confidence to go to 7 unlinke a few players. Sometimes I am not so cautious

Remarkably 6h+1 was a flat score with just a few bidding grand and a few not making 6+1

My Feeling is, that those who did bid 7 were doing this playing an All or Nothing style, … a style that gives you a Chance of Winning
the Tournament or ending up at the Bottom.

[Tramticket]

 FelicityR, on 2019-August-12, 04:03, said:

Tramticket's suggestion that partner has ♥Qx I just cannot agree with as if partner had solid ♥s, and a six card suit having bid at the three level, then just ♥xx would be considered adequate support to bid 4♥.

Hearts was the agreed trump suit and the 6♣ response to the Queen-ask surely showed the ♥Q? Else I am totally misunderstanding the system.

[Cyberyeti]

 P_Marlowe, on 2019-August-12, 04:12, said:

Hi,

the 6C bid should also deny the king of spades, a Card you most likely need for the Grand.

You habe no real way to find out, if Partner has 5 or 6 Clubs, if he has 6, you dont Need
the king of spades, with 5 claubds you only have 2 discards … Clubs may break 33, in which
case you have a 3rd discard, but more often they break 42, and then you Need the spade
fineesse.

With Kind regards
Marlowe

Well there's no law against ♣AKJxx either, and you only know about 9 of his points, ♦K will likely be good enough with 2 spades to go on the clubs if he has AKxxx. I see the grand as worst case clubs 3-3 or (4-2 and the spade finesse) ie around 60% so it's not unreasonable to bid as it could be absolutely cold.

[P_Marlowe]

 Cyberyeti, on 2019-August-12, 05:14, said:

Well there's no law against ♣AKJxx either, and you only know about 9 of his points, ♦K will likely be good enough with 2 spades to go on the clubs if he has AKxxx. I see the grand as worst case clubs 3-3 or (4-2 and the spade finesse) ie around 60% so it's not unreasonable to bid as it could be absolutely cold.

T9 in club will also help with some 4-2 distributions, …, so going for it is ok.
But those considerations can be made after the 6C Response, and if you bid 7 after 6C, I am fine with it,
bidding 7 after 6D / 6H is just …, you basically guess twice.
…
We both assume a 5 carder with Partner, a 4432 shape may or may not be still possible, although most would
bid 3NT over 1H.

[Cyberyeti]

 P_Marlowe, on 2019-August-12, 05:22, said:

T9 in club will also help with some 4-2 distributions, …, so going for it is ok.
But those considerations can be made after the 6C Response, and if you bid 7 after 6C, I am fine with it,
bidding 7 after 6D / 6H is just …, you basically guess twice.
…
We both assume a 5 carder with Partner, a 4432 shape may or may not be still possible, although most would
bid 3NT over 1H.

This is a fair point, better hope he has xx(x), Qx(x), Kxxx, AKJx in that case (or ♦Q instead of ♣J)

[FelicityR]

 Tramticket, on 2019-August-12, 04:32, said:

Hearts was the agreed trump suit and the 6♣ response to the Queen-ask surely showed the ♥Q? Else I am totally misunderstanding the system.

My genuine and sincere apologies, Tramticket. I have deleted this error from my post. What threw me was:So far you know that partner has ♣AK and ♥Q for the 2-over-1 bid. I should have realised that all the bidding so far has shown these cards. A bit of a senior moment on my part to say the least

[Tramticket]

 FelicityR, on 2019-August-12, 07:51, said:

My genuine and sincere apologies, Tramticket. I have deleted this error from my post. What threw me was:So far you know that partner has ♣AK and ♥Q for the 2-over-1 bid. I should have realised that all the bidding so far has shown these cards. A bit of a senior moment on my part to say the least

I didn't phrase it well - apologies for the confusion.

[HardVector]

Your bidding sequence is fine. A decent human player would have helped you out more, the bot will get it wrong a lot. After the 5s bid, you are basically asking partner to bid the grand with the heart Q. After all, what are they supposed to bid NOT holding it...6h? Another thing to think about, is what they are showing. After 6c, you know about ? Q? ? AKxx(x)(x). That's just 9 hcp and they don't have the diamond Q or spade Q. I think it's a bit pessimistic to think that partner's remaining hcp are the 3 jacks you don't see. Even if it is, there is the possibility of setting up partner's club suit. Holding the heart Q and 2 outside kings, partner should not settle for just a slam here.

[Cyberyeti]

 HardVector, on 2019-August-12, 10:15, said:

Your bidding sequence is fine. A decent human player would have helped you out more, the bot will get it wrong a lot. After the 5s bid, you are basically asking partner to bid the grand with the heart Q. After all, what are they supposed to bid NOT holding it...6h? Another thing to think about, is what they are showing. After 6c, you know about ? Q? ? AKxx(x)(x). That's just 9 hcp and they don't have the diamond Q or spade Q. I think it's a bit pessimistic to think that partner's remaining hcp are the 3 jacks you don't see. Even if it is, there is the possibility of setting up partner's club suit. Holding the heart Q and 2 outside kings, partner should not settle for just a slam here.

The worst hand partner can have is Jxx, Qx, QJxx, AKxx, but the grand has to be odds on over the range of things he can hold.

And I disagree with you're assessment that you're inviting grand with the ♥Q, you can need other things too, safe in the knowledge that if they don't have it, they will have another 2 points outside to make 6. You can also be angling to find out what they have outside for the purpose of bidding 6N rather than 6♥ at pairs.

[thepossum]

 Cyberyeti, on 2019-August-12, 05:14, said:

I see the grand as worst case clubs 3-3 or (4-2 and the spade finesse) ie around 60% so it's not unreasonable to bid as it could be absolutely cold.

Thx Cyberyeti

As I've said elsewhere my own sims (eg 96.9%) are very basic and clearly need some work to bring them closer to these assessed percentages. Double dummy sims always seem to overestimate chances, but I'm no expert obviously Note I just reran it without the King of spades and it only reduced the percentage to between 94.3 and 96.7% (without either king its around 92%) so maybe I'm doing something else wrong

Thanks everyone for all the tips and interesting discussion

If anyone is interested this was the lay of the cards and theoretically makes on any lead (I did get a nice friendly spade lead), although I'm sure there are ways not to make it

---

EDIT I just noticed there were problems with the pasted hand. Part of the bidding and play was lost. I just started having problems pasting hands recently. I have hopefully fixed it by pasting the link from the Flash client rather than the HTML client

[Cyberyeti]

 thepossum, on 2019-August-12, 17:04, said:

Thx Cyberyeti

As I've said elsewhere my own sims (eg 96.9%) are very basic and clearly need some work to bring them closer to these assessed percentages. Double dummy sims always seem to overestimate chances, but I'm no expert obviously

Thanks everyone for all the tips and interesting discussion

That's true if partner has 5 clubs, but as was pointed out (23)44 is also possible at which point it may be less good.

[thepossum]

 Cyberyeti, on 2019-August-12, 17:10, said:

That's true if partner has 5 clubs, but as was pointed out (23)44 is also possible at which point it may be less good.

I did give it 4+ clubs and originally had trusted the tool tips that it had 13-17 points. I just counted and it only has 12 points so reducing points by one (12-17) the chances (without either King) reduce to around 86% and without the King of spades (92%)

[Tramticket]

 thepossum, on 2019-August-12, 17:04, said:

If anyone is interested this was the lay of the cards and theoretically makes on any lead (I did get a nice friendly spade lead)

I am not a great fan of simulations of play problems. So let's imagine that we go back to the traditional approach of planning the play and analysing the best line. Let's also assume that defenders have led a trump against our 7♥ contract (the traditional advice is to lead a passive trump against a grand slam and I think most human opponents would select a trump here).

You have 12 top tricks and your possible plays for the thirteenth are:
- A spade finesse (you draw trumps and can try for clubs 3-3 first)
- ruff out the clubs and establish a long club (♣Q, ♣A and ruff a club - succeeds if clubs are no worse than 4-2)
- A squeeze - you need the same player to hold the king of spades and the long clubs
[Others will tell me if I have missed another option!]

The chances of clubs being 3-3 or 4-2 are pretty good (about 84% I think), which is a bit better than the combined chance of 3-3 clubs and falling back on a finesse.

On this basis I would play to set up a long club (the line with the best chance) and go down!

This is why a double-dummy simulation is not a great tool - it will always select the winning line because it can see through the backs of the cards.

Learning to analyse the best line is a better tool and will help your card-play.

[P_Marlowe]

 Tramticket, on 2019-August-13, 03:02, said:

I am not a great fan of simulations of play problems. So let's imagine that we go back to the traditional approach of planning the play and analysing the best line. Let's also assume that defenders have led a trump against our 7♥ contract (the traditional advice is to lead a passive trump against a grand slam and I think most human opponents would select a trump here).

You have 12 top tricks and your possible plays for the thirteenth are:
- A spade finesse (you draw trumps and can try for clubs 3-3 first)
- ruff out the clubs and establish a long club (♣Q, ♣A and ruff a club - succeeds if clubs are no worse than 4-2)
- A squeeze - you need the same player to hold the king of spades and the long clubs
[Others will tell me if I have missed another option!]

The chances of clubs being 3-3 or 4-2 are pretty good (about 84% I think), which is a bit better than the combined chance of 3-3 clubs and falling back on a finesse.

On this basis I would play to set up a long club (the line with the best chance) and go down!

This is why a double-dummy simulation is not a great tool - it will always select the winning line because it can see through the backs of the cards.

Learning to analyse the best line is a better tool and will help your card-play.

My take is, that you first draw trumps, and see, that they are 2-2, this gives you another entry,
which I believe you did not use.
And now you can test Clubs, see 5-1.
My take is, that the Finesse should now be better compared with the squezze, since it goes against the Player
with the short Clubs, if Clubs are the other way around, the Squeeze is now more likely to succeed (?!)
than the Finesse.

With Trumps 3-1, I would go with Clubs 4-2.