Question:
My partner and I held the following hand and got to 4 Spades with this auction. Since 6 Spades is cold, how could we have bid this to find the small slam, or was this just the lay of the cards?
Answer:
First, let’s look at your auction. Many partnerships would first bid stayman with responder’s hand. Then, raise partner’s major to game or be slightly more aggressive (more on that later). If partner doesn’t have a 4-card major, he responds 2D and then responder bids 3H to show 5 spades and 4 hearts and game going values. This allows opener to “transfer” to spades. You chose to transfer to 2 spades and then I assume you were going to bid 3 hearts to show 5-4 in the majors. Another option over a 2S bid by opener would be to bid 4C showing a singleton club on the way to 4S. This would be highly aggressive since partner maybe on the 15 HCP side of 1NT and you could get too high. In your auction, the 3S rebid by opener, showing maximum hand with 4 spades and your hand re-evaluated to 12ish points, a suggestion of slam is reasonable.
Second, many times small and grand slams can be made but are not really biddable. This hand is close to being one of those. However, a very well-oiled and aggressive partnership might get there with precise cue-bidding, as in the following auction.
I should explain the auction. Responder cue-bids 4C, is an aggressive attempt at getting to something greater than game and promises first or second round control (cue-bids at 4 level only promise 1st or 2nd round control). Opener then cue-bids 4D. Now responder does not have anything more to cue-bid and has minimal points, so signs off at 4S. Opener realizes responder has nothing in hearts to cue-bid but has shown some interest in slam. If responder has help in diamonds slam is very reasonable. But, how does he get that message across to responder. He needs to cue-bid. To cue-bid at the five level, responder is saying I have a heart cue-bid, so don’t worry there. He could pretend he has a cue-bid in clubs to see if responder can cue-bid diamonds back. His other option is to bid 5H directly that should say I have hearts well stopped, so look at your minors. That is all that responder needs: a singleton club (since opener didn’t cue-bid clubs, no wasted values) and KQ of diamonds which opener appears to be worried about. Remember, opener cue-bid diamonds at the 4 level and, since responder has the king, he must be showing the ace.
I indicated that a well-oiled and aggressive partnership could bid this hand this way. The partnership must have talked about cue-bidding style. One last comment: a well-oiled partnership would also have talked about partner bidding 3NT over the 3S response. Since we have found a big fit in spades, we are not playing 3NT. So, most partnerships would play that a 3NT bid now by responder would say he is “extremely” interested in slam (more than minimum points), so responder’s 4C bid here over 3S would show only a “slight” interest in slam.