Winter Pairs Round 4 - Part One

For the Winter Pairs you take your top four scores, out of seven I think. Last night was me and Anna's fourth, and in fact it's going to be our last one as we can't make any more. After a really up and down night, we finished on 54%. We bid two making slams, and one which went down one. Here's our bold bidding on the first one:

♠ A K 6 2 ♥ A 8 7 5 ♦ ♣ A K Q J 5 ♠ Q 9 4 ♥ T 3 ♦ K Q 9 6 5 ♣ 7 4 2 21 7 7 5 ♠ T 8 7 5 3 ♥ K 4 ♦ A T 7 ♣ 8 6 4 ♠ J ♥ Q J 9 6 2 ♦ J 8 4 3 2 ♣ T 9

W N E S Anna Danny 2♣* - 2♦* x 3♣* - 3♥ - 4♥ - 4NT* - 5♦* x 5♥ - 6♥ - - -

Anna has the big North hand. It's well worth a 2♣ opening as she can make game or even slam opposite lots of hands which might pass a one-level opening. I replied 2♦, which for us shows at least 5 points (we'd bid 2♥ with a really bad hand). Anna then bid a natural 3♣, and I bid a natural 3♥, which we've never discussed but I reckon should promise five Hearts. Anna raised me to 4♥, and I had a decision to make. I'd just read a blog post where someone in a similar situation to mine passed 4♥, and then struggled to make ten tricks (see here), but I decided to ignore that and bid on. 4NT was Keycard Blackwood. Anna showed three keycards, and since I had none, I bid 5♥. To my surprise, Anna then topped me up to 6♥. Highly irregular.

We do have a way to show a void after Blackwood and Anna should have bid 6♦ directly over my 4NT. She decided not to do this for some reason, and just showed her keycards. But then after both the opponents had doubled Diamonds, she reckoned that it was worth raising to 6♥.

I got a Diamond lead, which I ruffed in dummy. Everything's looking good, I just need to draw trumps. Ideally I'd lead the Queen from my hand, but was stuck in dummy so thought I'd just play safe by cashing the ♥A first. This worked fine, and I made it, but as Anna pointed out afterwards I risked going down if West had all four trumps. Perhaps I should have begun with a low trump to the Queen?

The second slam was the slowest hand I've ever bid or played. It's a zinger though, on a very distributional deal. I'll post that next time.