NIGHT OF HEART SLAMS
by Aleksander Wagner
Not every night you are dealt two slams, both hard to reach, and both very good and easy to play. It happened to me a couple of nights ago, and if you take a closer look at the following hands you must agree that there are some serious bidding problems in both of them. Even if you were given them in a bidding contest they wouldn't be easy to solve, not to mention solving them in a real life game as well as my partner did.
Did he bid them correctly? Who knows and who cares, and does it really matter? All that really counts is that in both hands we were on the same wavelenght, he took under his consideration my way of thinking, and I trusted him blindly.
The problems? Well, in the first hand it would be how to sell (or not to sell) the club 5 card suit without even one single point, and in the second hand how to reach a slam with 4-3 in trumps.
Deal no. 1:
W E
--------------------
Ax Kx 1C 1D
AKxx N QJxx 1H 1S(1)
AQ W E KJxxxx 2NT(2) 3H(3)
xxxxx S A 4H(4) 4NT(5)
5D(6) 7H(7)
1C was the better minor, 1D and 1H natural.
(1) Fourth suit forcing (for one round), some additional values
(2) Either 2425 with 16 points or more, or 18+ points balanced
(3) Since we are already in game forcing position, 3H is the strongest bid possible, asks West to cue-bid or something...
(4) 4H sounds as if West has nothing to show. But is it possible with all his strenght? THINK! West did think and realized he had no space to cue-bid all his top values! 4H must mean that his honors are good and easy to show. Quite brilliant, I'd say!
(5) Blackwood asking for 5 Aces ( four "real" Aces and the trump King)
(6) One or four, which in this case means three aces and the heart King.
(7) I trusted West's 4H bid promised more than a bare Axx in my first suit (diamonds), something like Ax or AQx, and I bid the grand slam. The result - one of the best grand slams I've ever played!
Deal no. 2:
W E
AKxxx xx --------------------
AJ10x N KQx 1S 2C
Axx W E Jx 2H 3D(1)
x S AKxxxx 4D(2) 4NT(3)
5C(4) 6H(5)
(1) Fourth suit forcing (game forcing)
(2) Very strong (over 3NT level), three or four good diamonds, 5431 or 5440
(3) Blackwood asking for 4 Aces
(4) No or three Aces
(5) This is what I had on my mind all along!!! It's quite improbable that West bid so strongly with bare Axxx in hearts, more likely it's AJ109 (wishful thinking...), but if he did, then he must have the diamond King!
No weird distributions, after the strongest diamond lead West soon discovered that spades were 3-3, and he made the contract even though trumps were 4-2.
