[ArtK78]

Having qualified for the regional swiss by scoring only 68 VPs in the qualifying sessions of the Roth Open Swiss, you arrive at the last round (after being blitzed in the preceeding round) needing a win to place in the low overalls.

You pick up this collection, both vul:

Axxxx
Qxxx
Axxx
----

You are playing with an occasional partner, and you play no frills 2/1 game forcing. You have discussed that over interference over RKCB, double is the first step, pass is the second step, the next bid is the third step, etc. You are also playing 1430 responses. What you have not discussed is whether you play Exclusion Blackwood.

Pard.....You
...1♦......1♠
...3♠......?

(1) What would you do?

I chose 5♣, thinking that it could be nothing other than Exclusion RKCB. This was doubled, and partner bid 5♥. For no obvious reason, RHO starts asking questions about the 5♣ bid. Partner volunteers that she does not know what it means but "we don't play Exclusion Blackwood."

5♥ gets doubled.

(2) What now?

[mike777]

fwiw I dont think you can play exclusion without specific agreement but ok

clear here, at this point, you have no agreements

it just seems 4d is safer here at this point.

over 5hx who knows I will try pass.

[Mbodell]

Have you talked about what you do when a 1430 answer gets doubled? Is XX or pass part of the Q ask or K ask? I think if partner explained 5♣ as exclusion and that 5♥ showed 2 w/ the Q you'd be hunting for 7. So you have to at least do a king ask now. It may even be that 7♠ is a LA not suggested by the UI. But if you haven't talked about X after a 1430 answer, then I guess 5nt is acceptable.

[mr1303]

Playing ROPI or the equivalent, partner has 2 with the Q, absent any UI. So a grand slam try is clearly required.

If you bid 5S, I'd expect you to get ruled against.

[Fluffy]

Even if playing exclusion, this hand is not about aces, its a bout a lot more, bidding 4♣ and then 5♣ will bring partner´s judgement into the picture.

As others said, any sing off below the 7 level is suggested by UI, so you have to make a move forward.

[gnasher]

If partner is showing two with the queen, the obvious forward move is pass. Partner should redouble with ♥K or shortage. If he doesn't do that, there's no realistic chance of a grand slam. I don't think any other grand-slam try is a logical alternative.

[keylime]

It can't be a minus position, to pass it around to pard. The fact that pard didn't pick up on the ERKCB is of not enough consequence yet to warrant concern.

[Phil]

mr1303, on 2012-July-23, 02:28, said:

Playing ROPI or the equivalent, partner has 2 with the Q, absent any UI. So a grand slam try is clearly required.

If you bid 5S, I'd expect you to get ruled against.

ROPI / R1P0 (in my partnerships) would apply, but Art needs to tell us what his agreements are when RKC is doubled. Partner has shown ♠KQ + ♥A. 5N would ask for SK's and I expect partner would show me the ♦K. For a grand to be right, I (essentially) need ♠KQ + ♥AK + ♦KQ which is quite a parlay.

The UI tells you partner is cue bidding over your 'splinter'. Your 5N will probably be read as GSF unfortunately. Life sucks.

[Phil]

gnasher, on 2012-July-23, 08:16, said:

If partner is showing two with the queen, the obvious forward move is pass.

Would pass confirm possession of all keys in your partnerships?

[gnasher]

Phil, on 2012-July-23, 13:12, said:

Would pass confirm possession of all keys in your partnerships?

It would be undiscussed, of course. There is always something better to do than discuss Blackwood sequences.

But regardless, I'd expect partner to redouble with second-round heart control. What else can it possibly show?

[ArtK78]

We discussed that we play ROPI (redouble first step, pass second step, first bid third step, etc.) over doubles, but, as previously stated, we had not discussed exclusion blackwood at all.

In real life, I bid 6♠, and found partner with:

KQJx
A
KQTxx
Qxx

So the grand was easy. The board was a push.

Interesting point for discussion - I knew when I bid 5♣ that partner would not interpret it as Exclusion, as she is very consistent when facing an undiscussed auction - it does not exist. She doesn't try to figure out what it is, it just doesn't exist.

By the way, I know that my hand isn't about key cards; however, I was always going to bid a small slam (right or wrong), and I was hoping for a 2 key card with Q response so I could bid 5NT showing all the key cards and then partner might be in a position to bid the grand, which she would be if she were on the same wavelength. Maybe I should have bid 5NT over the double of 5♥.

I also know that the last two paragraphs are not consistent. But as long as I am going to bid a small slam, I thought that I would make a grand slam try, and this one at least makes some sense. As one of my teammates said after the round, even if you don't interpret the 5♣ bid as Exclusion, at least you know it shows a club void.

[gnasher]

[deleted]

[Zelandakh]

I am thoroughly confused Art. You made a bid intended it as XRKCB planning on making a grand slam try after hearing a 2+Q response. Then, on hearing a 2+Q response, you jump to the small slam because partner told the opponents that your bid was not XRKCB. Have you actually read the UI laws at all? Just as a further point, if your partner had indeed given the 2+Q response without the opponents doubling it would have been 5NT - bidding 5NT over this might have gotten a Director call!

[gordontd]

ArtK78, on 2012-July-24, 13:15, said:

Interesting point for discussion - I knew when I bid 5♣ that partner would not interpret it as Exclusion, as she is very consistent when facing an undiscussed auction - it does not exist. She doesn't try to figure out what it is, it just doesn't exist.

By the way, I know that my hand isn't about key cards; however, I was always going to bid a small slam (right or wrong), and I was hoping for a 2 key card with Q response so I could bid 5NT showing all the key cards and then partner might be in a position to bid the grand, which she would be if she were on the same wavelength. Maybe I should have bid 5NT over the double of 5♥.

I also know that the last two paragraphs are not consistent. But as long as I am going to bid a small slam, I thought that I would make a grand slam try, and this one at least makes some sense.

No, it makes no sense at all if partner is going to behave as though she has no idea what is going on.

[ArtK78]

Zelandakh, on 2012-July-25, 02:02, said:

I am thoroughly confused Art. You made a bid intended it as XRKCB planning on making a grand slam try after hearing a 2+Q response. Then, on hearing a 2+Q response, you jump to the small slam because partner told the opponents that your bid was not XRKCB. Have you actually read the UI laws at all? Just as a further point, if your partner had indeed given the 2+Q response without the opponents doubling it would have been 5NT - bidding 5NT over this might have gotten a Director call!

Of course I understand the UI implications of everything that happened. That is the problem. I also know for a fact that this partner does not play Exclusion, and I bid it anyway. So the "UI" didn't really change things. She said that we didn't play Exclusion, which was true, but I bid it anyway. I don't know any other rational way to try to get to a grand on these cards.

As for her 5NT response to 5♣ in the absence of a double, I would bid 6♣ over that. With this partner, it runs a small risk of playing in 6♣, but I suspect that the worst thing that she might do would be bidding 6♠.

By the way, on the very next board, over the auction (2♠) - P - (3♠), she bid 3NT on 0-3-5-5. It took a lot of discussion after the round (and the event) was over to convince her that 3NT was to play and not for the minors. She never even considered that 4♠ might be for the minors (or at least for 2 suits).

[han]

Besides contradicting yourself in one post,

ArtK78, on 2012-July-24, 13:15, said:

I knew when I bid 5♣ that partner would not interpret it as Exclusion.

also contradicts your earlier:

ArtK78, on 2012-July-22, 21:39, said:

I chose 5♣, thinking that it could be nothing other than Exclusion RKCB.

Given that your plan was this

ArtK78, on 2012-July-24, 13:15, said:

I was hoping for a 2 key card with Q response so I could bid 5NT showing all the key cards and then partner might be in a position to bid the grand.

I agree with your

Quote

Maybe I should have bid 5NT over the double of 5♥.

Indeed, you should do what you were planning to do before you heard the UI.

[han]

ArtK78, on 2012-July-25, 07:00, said:

So the "UI" didn't really change things.

Yes it did, and whether the UI actually influenced your decision or something else made you bid 6S is irrelevant. If you knew for a fact that partner would not understand 5C and would ignore it, why did you bid it? Perhaps you regretted your undiscussed bid already before your partner's explanation, and you would have signed off in 6S even if they had not asked questions. We will never know, and it should not matter for our verdict. Here by "we" I mean the jury that would hang you if this case ever came to court.

Having said that, I really like that you posted this hand here. UI is a tricky subject, and we can all benefit from this discussion.

[han]

I also had UI in the national swiss last weekend. My opponents never could have known about it, so should I have told them?

I did not. I was confident that I did not make use of the UI. Also, the slam we reached went down so we lost a lot of IMPs on the hand.

[gnasher]

han, on 2012-July-26, 07:32, said:

I also had UI in the national swiss last weekend. My opponents never could have known about it, so should I have told them?

I don't think there's any obligation to tell the opponents that you think you have UI, as long as you follow the rules about what to do about it.

On the other hand, last weekend (in a very non-national Swiss) this occurred:
EW bid to a making slam without NS noticing anything odd. At one point West signed off in game and East moved. At the end of the auction, East volunteered the information that he thought his partner had hesitated before signing off, but he was confident that he had acted properly. NS told the director that they hadn't noticed any hesitation, but if there was one they didn't think East was allowed to bid with his actual hand. The director agreed and adjusted the score. So justice was done, but only because East had told the opponents about the UI.

[Zelandakh]

Thanks for telling this Andy. This is the kind of story that helps to restore my faith in bridge players (which has sadly taken a few knocks lately).