[Stephen Tu]

My partner and I had a bit of disagreement over this situation:
You have a strong 5-5-0-3 over RHO's 3d preempt. You bid 4d, that much is fairly clear. Partner bids 4s, which promises nothing more than a preference for spades over hearts, although you are entitled to assume a couple useful cards for the purposes of making game. So partner holding a couple useful cards should not go beyond game, partner is already playing you for something, when they are on the low end for 4d. But what if they have something extra?

What is a minimum example hand you'd try for slam after this?
????x-????x-void-??x

Fill in the honors.

How many cover cards should responder to 4d have before he should do something more than just bid 4M?

Basically I thought partner was rather nuts risking 5 level opposite what could be nothing, I thought that one should be rather conservative here, and be happy with making games, and that you are bound to miss slam here somewhat frequently, but should shrug it off due to the preempt. If you try for slam too aggressively from either side of the table you risk 5 off 1 and 6 off 1 too frequently for it to pay off IMO, vs. the # of games you make being more conservative. But if my expectations are off of norm, I'd like to recalibrate.

Bonus question: Whats the difference between (3d)-4d-?-5d and (3d)-5d?

[dake50]

I have a set of 2-suited T/O's here in addition to Dbl.
So 4D Q-bid already announced my 5+controls with D-single
4+ with D-void. If partner simply chooses one of my 5-5,
I would need 7 controls with a D-single, 6 if D-void
to go to 5-level.
Expect partner to show 3+controls with a fit.

[perko90]

The partner of the 4♦ bidder (advancer) should have controls and a fit - not just HCPs to make a slam try. What would the expected reasonable minimum hand look like for the 4♦ bidder? Something like AQxxx AKxxx x Kx? So, advancer should drive toward slam with 3 or so cover cards and a fit. So for the 4♦ bidder to make a move over a preference auction, he would need to have a chance at slam w/ at best 2 cover cards and xxx support from ptr and some expectation of 5-level safety if ptr's hand proves disappointing. So, I'd say: AQJxx AKQxx - Axx or AKJ9x AKJxx - KQx would be around the minimum for making a move - definitely needs at least 4 out of 5 of ♠AK ♥AK ♣A and then some.


BTW, I would suspect that (3♦)-5♦ would be exclusion Blackwood, but if I hadn't discussed it, I wouldn't make the bid and torture ptr.