Jennbridge: A Bidding Question

By Bob Klein.
Playing matchpoints in a club game, you hold, in first seat with both vulnerable:

♠Txxxxx
♥Axxx
♦Qxx
♣void

You deal and pass.  LHO opens 2♦, weak.  Your partner, a very good player, overcalls 2♠.  Now, while you are thinking about how many spades to bid, RHO comes in with 4♣! What is your call?


It looks like your choices are to raise spades or cue bid.  Since you are a passed hand, partner cannot expect too much from you.  On the other hand, your hand has the loser count of a good opening bid! (Only 2 losers in spades due to the massive trump fit, 2 losers in hearts and 2 1/2 in diamonds--6 1/2 losers.)

With the 11-card or longer fit opposite partner who has come into the auction vulnerable, I decided that this hand had too much slam potential to bid only 4♠.  Since the opponents had bid 2 suits, I couldn't make a slam invite by jumping to 5♠, since that bid asks partner to go to slam if he has a control in the opponents' suit.  So I had to do something else.  I considered bidding 4♥, but finally decided that the best choice was to bid 5♣. This would clearly show a big spade fit and club control with interest in a possible slam. Given the 4♣ bid and my original pass, I hoped that partner would interpret this as showing a void.

My bid worked like a charm.  Partner, holding:

♠AKJxx
♥Kx
♦AJx
♣xxx

bid 6♠, which was an excellent contract.  It happened to make seven because of the particular lie of the diamond spots.  My RHO led the stiff ♦ten.  My diamonds were actually Q87 opposite AJ4 so the suit came in for no losers.  The first trick went ten, queen, king ace so there was a marked finesse of the nine.  The ten had to be a singleton since his RHO surely had 6 diamonds for a vulnerable weak two bid. Nobody else bid the slam so we got a cold top.

RHO could have made my life much more difficult if he had bid 5♣ instead of 4, holding:

♠x
♥Jxx
♦T
♣AKJT9xxx.

I wouldn't have the cuebid available so I would have just settled for 5♠, which partner surely would have passed.

Good luck!