Slamming again

This next hand was very interesting. I picked up a monster in third chair – KJ108   8   A2   AKQJ103. I opened 1 club, Daniel bid 3D on my left, and Keith made a negative double. Darren passed. If Keith has a good hand, we belong in slam. Six clubs, six spades, maybe even the 7 level depending on his cards.

I was way too good to jump to 4S, so I first bid 4D. Keith did not respond 4H or 4S, rather he bid 4NT.

This had not come up before, but we do have lots of slam bidding principles. One is that 4NT is never blackwood if we have not agreed a trump suit. So here is my passed hand partner bidding 4NT. I decided he also was slammish, but did not want to cue bid 5D as he lacked a diamond control. Now what?

If he has as little as Axxx in  both majors, I only need to find the queen of spades to make 6S (assuming they lead a diamond). Could he have AQxx  AJxx  xxx   xx or something like that? If yes, we belong in 7 spades – but not 7 clubs, as we need the 4-4 fit.

I don’t know where you can go to look up the correct bid now. I could jump to 6S, but a grand slam was still very possible and I needed to cooperate with partner, not jump around unilaterally. I punted back at Keith with 5D. To me this was saying we are for sure going to a small slam; I do have a first round diamond control, and the rest you have to figure out.

Keith’s next call was 6 hearts, so I had my first easy bid in a few rounds, since I clearly have to bid 6S here. 7 clubs cannot be the right bid. 7 spades does not feel right either. If he has the perfect hand for spades, why would he jump to 6H? With stronger spades, I felt he would have bid 5S, and I would then have bid 5NT GSF.

His actual jump to 6H told me his hearts were stronger than his spades, so logically we were missing the spade queen. The layout was as follows:

North
♠	A965
♥	AK53
♦	874
♣	97
South
♠	KJ108
♥	8
♦	A2
♣	AKQJ103

The opening lead was a diamond honour. There was little to the play. I won the Ace; played the jack of spades over the dummy’s Ace, and cashed two hearts, pitching my losing diamond.

Next, I ran the spade 9 from dummy – not caring if it lost to the queen in the West hand (Daniel) since then I was cold. Similarly, if LHO showed out of spades, I would simply re-finesse spades and claim thirteen tricks!

East (Darren) had Q42 of spades, and a singleton diamond, so I ended up with 13 tricks – we had successfully introduced our trump suit at the six level.