All's Well That Ends Well

Dave Neuman and I were licking our wounds after getting knocked out of a KO one afternoon in Monterey, but we decided to have a little fun and entered that evening's side game. Little did we know how much fun it would be! There are two hands where our opponents had fun at our expense (through no fault of our own) and we scored absolute zero. The two hands occurrred in successive rounds. The good news is that we survived these to score over 60% and win.

Hand 1: The Grand Slam that Wasn't

We sat down at Pat and Jerry Scoville's table. I picked this up in first seat:

A
AKQxxx
Qxx
AJx

I opened 1 Heart. Dave responded 1 Spade. Now, this hand doesn't seem to need much from partner to make 4 Hearts, so I bid it. This tells him that I really like my hand and have a strong trump suit. Dave now bid 5 Diamonds. This was a signal that he was initiating a slam try, but couldn't bid Blackwood, so he probably didn't have a club control. Now I'm nearly sure that we can make at least a small slam, since he needed decent cards to do this. I'm thinking of a possible grand slam now if Dave has enough. for example, if Dave has a little as KQxxxx/xxx/Ax/xx, it makes 7 if either hearts are 2/2 with spades 4/2 or any heart split with spade 3/3, and he could easily have more.

So how should I go about finding out if he has enough? The two logical choices are 5 Spades and 5NT. Each of these bids promise possession by the partnership of all the first round controls if the 5 Diamond cuebid was the ace or a void. I was somewhat concerned that Dave might interpret 5NT as "Pick a slam", so I chose to bid 5 Spades since that was an unambiguous grand slam try. This bid showed the spade ace and club ace as well as strong trumps and invited him to bid 7 Hearts if he had more than I might expect.

Dave took the plunge and bid 7 Hearts. Pat joked with us and said something like "Well, it looks like you guys did it to us again!" Before I saw dummy, I then jokingly said, "Well, I haven't made it yet!" Dave tabled this hand:

KQxxx
Jx
AKTx
xx

A
AKQxxx
Qxx
AJx
I took one look at it and knew we did well to bid this grand slam since we had 13 top tricks once I drew trumps. So I joked to them, "Well, hearts could always be 5-0". Neither one of them said anything, but now I know that Jerry was quietly smirking to himself. I won the opening club lead in my hand and played a heart to the jack, and Pat puts the 4 of clubs on the table! I was sure that she was razzing me about my joke about the heart split and would say "Just kidding!" So I turned over and looked into her eyes waiting for it, but she just laughed and left that awful card there. Now, at last, Jerry, who knew all along that he had us, laughed and said something like "You were right!" The rascal was sitting there with T98xx. So down we went in a grand slam unlikely to be bid by anyone else in this field.

Hand 2: Smellling Like a Rose

At the next table, I picked up in fourth seat, with both sides vulnerable against two sweet old ladies:

void
Qx
Qxxx
QJ9xxxx

LHO opened 1 Diamond. Dave jumped to 2 Spades, a weak jump overcall. RHO bids 3 Hearts. It now goes pass, pass, pass! LHO had passed a forcing bid, something nobody else in the field would have done. I lead the queen of clubs, and she tables

Axx
Axx
Jxxx
Axx.

We all thought "what a strange thing to do!" while she said something like "I just didn't like my hand." Now the fun begins. Dave ruffs it. It doesn't take him long to figure out why I hadn't led his suit, so he led a spade which I ruffed. We took the first 4 tricks with our Kx and Qx of hearts, and declarer soon claimed the rest. Now came the coup de grace. One of the opponents said "We came out smelling like a rose on this one!" Another hand, another zero.