Slammers’ paradise

Here is a tough hand from a past Gold Coast Congress, submitted by Nick Hughes.

Dealer North, Nil vul.

          NORTH
          ♠ J94
          ♥ T863
          ♦ T72
          ♣ 972
WEST                EAST
♠ Q                 ♠ A853
♥ AKQ94             ♥ 752
♦ A984              ♦ KQ53
♣ A84               ♣ KT
          SOUTH
          ♠ KT762
          ♥ J
          ♦ J6
          ♣ QJ653

How would you bid this hand?

WEST     EAST    

         1D         
1H       1NT          
2C (Checkback) 2H
3D       4D
4NT (RKCB) 5S
5NT      6C
7D       Pass

The decisions in this auction start early, with the first one being whether to open the East hand. Experienced players tend to open most 12 HCP hands, even with no 5-card suit, and that is the recommended action here.

Over East’s 1D, some players would stretch to overcall 1S with the South cards, not vulnerable, but assume that East-West instead have an uninterrupted auction. West responds 1H (new suit forcing by responder); what should be East’s next call?

The traditional approach would be to rebid 1S to avoid missing a possible fit there. After all, West could have four spades as well as having four or more hearts. Nowadays, however, it is popular to rebid 1NT on a hand such as East’s (balanced with no fit for partner’s hearts).

It is then important to have a way to find out more about opener’s hand. The convention that allows this to be done is called Checkback, sometimes known as Checkback Stayman because of its similarity to the better-known convention popularised by Sam Stayman.

There are many variations of Checkback; here is one. Over opener’s 1NT rebid, a bid of 2C by responder asks opener to make the next bid at the two-level if minimum, and the three-level if maximum, and also to bid features “up the line”.

Over 2C Checkback, if East were to rebid 2D that would show a 5-card suit, while the 2H bid showed “delayed” or 3-card support for partner’s hearts (with four hearts, East would have supported immediately). East could also have bid 2S to show four cards there but remember we bid features “up the line”, meaning the cheapest (lowest) available feature is shown first.

There are values for slam and West now knows that there is a 5-3 fit in hearts, as well as a 4-4 fit in diamonds (in Standard the 1D opening initially promised only 3+ diamonds, but the only time one opens 1D with only three cards is with four cards in each major i.e. precisely a 4-4-3-2 shape, which East cannot have given the failure to raise hearts immediately). Which fit to go for?

In an ordinary duplicate pairs the answer would be easy – the major, because it scores a little bit more. But this is teams scoring, where it is not important to score a little more than the others, it is important to make sure of the big amounts by bidding to the safest slam.

Often the 4-4 is superior to the 5-3 fit, so our West player set diamonds as trumps. In response to Roman Keycard Blackwood, 5S shows two keycards and the queen of trumps. (Keycards are the four aces and the trump king.) The 5NT bid asked partner to show a specific king, so 6C showed the CK.

West can now count five heart tricks and four diamond tricks (if both suits break), a spade trick and two clubs. That makes 12 tricks and one more should be able to be made by ruffing, so 7D becomes the final contract. Without looking at the North-South cards, how should you play the contract?

After winning the CK, start by cashing the DK. If the DJ or D10 falls, you may be able to pick up on a 4-1 break, but that is not relevant this time. Next play the DQ, keeping small trumps in the East hand as they may be needed for ruffing. What next?

If hearts are 3-2, there will be no problems but on the actual 4-1 layout, it is necessary to ruff a heart in the East hand, as well as ruffing a club there. Therefore before drawing another round of trumps, test the hearts by cashing two rounds of the suit. Sure enough, South shows up with a singleton! And luckily for you, South is not the defender with a trump still left.

Cash the third top heart, and ruff a heart to establish the suit. Back to West with the CA, and ruff a club. Then cash the SA and ruff a spade to get to West to draw the last trump, for 13 tricks.

When the same hand was played in the Seniors Teams, one East played in 6NT against a South player whose failing eyesight had led her to put the king of spades in with her clubs. She reports:

“My opening lead was obvious – the CK – but one nano-second before it hit the table it metamorphosed into the SK. There were gasps of admiration as the king gobbled up dummy’s bare queen. The stunned declarer won the ace and took her ten remaining tricks conceding the last three to partner’s long heart and SJ-9. Hasn’t anybody heard of a senior moment?”