This hand came up at a local duplicate bridge game. I held the East cards and was very surprised to find so many players in the North seat having trouble with this hand. Only one pair reached the correct contract of six spades. One pair reached six not trump and found the club ace in a favorable position. This allowed them to make their contract. One pair played four spades, making six. One played three no trump making four. Two pairs reached contracts that were defeated. One was down one and the other down two.
I have shown a bidding sequence that would be reasonable on these holdings. Using standard systems, South opens one club. North is ecstatic but has to show some restraint. It is iportant to find out what kind of an opening hand South is working with. One diamond is forcing and allows South to continue to describe his hand.
One player asked if it was not important for him to show his excellent hand by making a "jump shift". Here is the reason for NOT making this kind of bid. North is aware that his side holds at least thirty high card points. It is very unlikely that the opponents will interfer in the auction. Why take up bidding space early in the auction? It is better to allow South to bid his major suit holding (if he has one) before trying to determine what level to play the hand at.
South rebids one spade. North now knows that there is an eight card spade fit. It is not likely that South is missing both the ace and the queen of spades. If he has neither of those cards he is going to have a difficult time finding enough points to open the bidding. Additionally, South has shown that he does not have a hand more powerful than a normal opening bid, so a grand slam is not very probable.
North's four no trump bid is regular old fashioned Blackwood, asking for aces. This is the situation that the Blackwood convention was made for. Before North bids a slam, he wants to make sure that his side is not missing more than one ace. South show one ace and North bids the small slam, knowing that an ace is missing.
The big problem with these hands is that they don't come up that often and players who are not able to play more than once or twice a week are not going to see them enough to get comfortable with them. That is why bridge books and bridge exercises are so important in helping you improve your game.
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