Friday, April 5, 2013

Call me an old fogie

"(5NT Pick-a-slam) grows in popularity every year. It has pretty much made the Grand Slam Force obsolete. (It used to be that 5NT asked partner to bid a grand slam with 2 of the top 3 honors, but in the days of RKC, that method is no longer needed)." -- Larry Cohen

Playing in the Lebhar IMP Pairs at the St. Louis North American Bridge Championships (NABC) with Richard Oshlag, I picked up: A K J 8 3 2 A Q 4 K A K J.

Partner opened 3, over to you.

I bid 5NT, Grand Slam Force and partner bid 7 which showed two of the top three diamond honors. I corrected back to 7, and Richard made seven.

Here are all four hands:



I was happy to see that he didn't have the J and the suit didn't split, so 7NT had no play. It was IMPs anyhow, so no need to be greedy.

With the bad splits, Deep Finesse says that 3NT is the limit here. For chuckles, I like to check what it says can be made. East-West can make 4 or 2! North-South can make 1!

I was slightly surprised to check my scores after the session and see that we had won 7.99 IMPs on the board, one that should be fairly flat.

What's going on?

I checked with a friend and his partner opened 4, he tried RKC and his partner passed. She thought he was offering it as a place to play.

I can imagine others who agree that after a preempt, RKC is off and 4NT is straight Blackwood. In these cases, you need Grand Slam Force, so (in certain cases) I wouldn't put it on the shelf and forget about it just yet.

12 comments:

  1. So when your bridge buddies read your poker posts I imagine that they have the same look of confusion I have right now?

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  2. Ignore Sparky's ignorance. At poker, he thinks outs are his in-law's view of him. And not being a stud player, he can't fathom distribution. And, being from Illinois,the sucker state;finesse is an outlier. He's always confused when the cards in his hand exceed 2.

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  3. Yep, I,m afraid I don,t get a bit of this either!

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  4. No one else did so I will. You're an old fogie, lol. I'm with them, I don't get a lot of this either however I do have at least some inclination from playing Whist many years ago.

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  5. This looks even more complicated than the theory section of the Big Six Wheel training manual.

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  6. Nice auction, great to have clear agreements.

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  7. Wow partner preempts and you're the one sitting with all the points in the deck. Usually you got 2 and the opponents have it all. Well played and well bid. It's been so long since I played I didn't know what a grand slam force was.

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  8. Auction? Was he playing on eBay again? Well, at least he's avoiding the infomercials.

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  9. Hi Dave! Nice to hear from you. Re your comment on Florida Fotos: You Memphis cats sure are perceptive! :)

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  10. I would never call you an old fogie. Unless you smoked cigars. Then I'd probably call you and old fogie with a stogie! :)

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  11. Don't many expert players use 4C as keycard after a (non-club) preempt .. with, in this case, a third step response of 4S showing one key card plus the queen of the preempt suit?

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  12. @Lehman: Yes, in fact some play 3C pass 4C as asking!

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