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“Grand” Bidding.

We all want to. A “grand” bid and made usually produces a great score at any form of scoring and usually gets “bragging rights” in any team post-mortem! So, why then are we so shy when it comes to bidding them? Firstly, though, what is your bid here? You will get no marks at all if your answer is 7 because of the introduction. If you do make the bid, I will withdraw one important card from your partner’s hand to ensure you record -100! This is about method, not end result.

 

4 is a splinter, game-forcing, naturally! 5 shows 2 key-cards and the Q.

It sounds like all your Christmases have come at once. To go with your good-looking 18 count, your partner has produced at least 4-card support with the missing honour, a shortage opposite A42 and both missing aces. The question is how much more do they have? They may just hold a 10 count for their 4 bid. J or J might be there but neither is necessarily helpful. However, say partner produced Q or Q . Now, we know there will be no heart loser. If it was Q, then there is a heart discard available on A if needed and if it were Q, then there should be two discards available on AQ, as long as it is at least a 3-card suit.

A method

How then to find out? Asking for kings does not help as we hold the important missing ones. What then about bidding a side-suit to ask for extra cards in that suit, in particular the queen or a doubleton? That would have worked a treat here. Bid 6, not just confirming all the key cards but asking that very question. Indeed, with step responses, the first step denying anything useful, you would still be able to ask the same question in hearts. This time, there would have been no need to ask a second question:

 

In response to 6, 6 would have denied help. 6 would have shown a doubleton club and 6 the Q. Now, you can bid 7. Had West needed to find out about a missing king, they would have bid 5NT. 

As you can see, after any lead, declarer can ruff two diamonds in dummy, draw trumps, cash K and discard two hearts on the AQ.

The board occurred in last weekend’s Fullarton Teams held in Napier. There were 16 tables in play with only Tim Schumacher and George Masters bidding and making 7. 12 tables played in 6 and the other East-Wests did not appreciate how well their hands matched, playing alternative contracts.

So, a grand slam on offer but only accepted by one pair. The answer to why we are hesitant to bid grand-slams is that we need to be fairly sure they will make, especially in Teams bridge. The result of failure can be very costly. Tomorrow, we will look at another possible grand slam from the same event.

Oh, if you just “punted” 7, the card we will remove is, of course, Q. West needs to know more than that their partner has the 2 missing aces and the trump queen. There are no doubt more ways of discovering the answer to that question. The above is just one.

Richard Solomon

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