Slam in Three Denominations
But not in the One Chosen
|
|  ------ |
|
|
 Q |
|
|
 A J 9 6 4 |
|
|
 A K Q 8 7 6 3 |
|
| 8 |
|
Q J 9 6 4 3 |
| A J 8 7 5 3 2 |
|
10 9 6 |
| 10 3 2 |
|
7 5 |
| 10 9 |
|
J 2 |
|
A K 10 7 5 2 |
|
|
K 4 |
|
|
K Q 8 |
|
|
5 4 |
| |
| North | East | South | West |
| 1 |
Pass |
1 |
2 |
| 3 |
Pass |
4 |
Pass |
| 4 NT |
Pass |
5 |
Pass |
| 6 |
Dbl | All | pass |
I guess this is the ultimate in non-support in a trump suit. So unless spades are solid, and there's really no reason to suppose they're near the club holding North is looking at, you're not going to make 6 spades. And didn't East give you a little warning? Oh, yes, I wouldn't rely too much on the opponents. Oh, no. But when you're looking at a void in your partner's trump suit and you hear a double, you might suspect that you've got an uneven split coming. When on top of that, you've got a self-supporting suit in clubs, not to mention a secondary suit where your partner might have some tickets, don't you think you might concentrate on a known powerful suit. To be sure, a six club bid would have had to come before the six spade bid and the double, but then 6 no was still open.
Not that South is blameless. Oh, no. He should certainly support his partner's diamonds immediately. Now, with a known fit there, if North refers to spades, then you might think of slam in the major. But a six-card suit headed by A K 10 is hardly a self-supporting suit, and should not be insisted on with not just a rebid, but a jump rebid.
This, in other words, is another example of no trump working better than a trump suit because there's nothing much the spade suit can do for the hand as trump, but a lot the minor suits can. Actually, with the guarded king of hearts, South might also have thought of a no trump slam, though to be sure, it would have been tenuous at that point. Anyway, when you have no ruffing potential in the short trump hand -- and the North hand is short if nothing else -- and you have all suits stopped with high cards, there's a good bet that no trump will work better than the trump suit, allowing you flexibility both in the sequence you cash out winners and in the dominant suit for taking tricks.
A few other tidbits: four people were in 7 no, doubled. The only one I looked at jumped from a 2 club opener to 7 no. No foolin' around with Blackwood here . . . Two people bid 7 clubs, where the opening leader isn't looking at the ace of hearts, and made it. And, of course, a number made 6 no with ease.