[phil_20686]

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What will you bid now? Your bidding is consistent with a variety of weak hands with a singleton diamond a swell as wk nt hands and 5422. You have denied 6h unless poor and 3s over 3c would indicate worry.

[Yu18772]

I think 4NT would really show that all my values are badly positioned and a likely 5422 hand...
Yu

[Codo]

4 ♠ to suggest good values there or/and a 4522.

[paulg]

I'd like to bid a natural 5NT. I think I am too good for a simple 4NT and four spades sounds like I am agreeing clubs. Second choice is four diamonds.

[billw55]

I think my hand is pretty good. Partner's bidding is strong, pushing for slam in a minor. I hold Tx Qx, not bad at all, with fine controls in the majors. I have a clear max for my bidding. I expect to end in a minor suit slam. I start with 4♦, simple preference, and will cue spades next whatever partner does.

[P_Marlowe]

4D - Partner needs to have a 65 distribution, 4D should show secondary support,
and some useful values, if partner is slam interested.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[ArtK78]

If I am going to take a preference to 4♦, I might as well bid 4♠ along the way. Perhaps partner holds something like:

xx
---
AKQJxx
KJT9x

[Zelandakh]

I think 4♠ should agree clubs here. The choices seem to be 4♦ and 5NT. My first thought was 4♦ and that seems to be the most flexible option.

[mikeh]

ArtK78, on 2012-September-25, 08:47, said:

If I am going to take a preference to 4♦, I might as well bid 4♠ along the way. Perhaps partner holds something like:

xx
---
AKQJxx
KJT9x

My view is that if I were your partner and heard/saw your 4♠ cue, I'd place you with 4=5=1=3, which may lead to an embarrassing result.

I don't see the rush to leave partner guessing about trump.

We have a super hand on the auction: we hold a control-rich 14, and we have the great club Q and the potentially useful diamond 10, and we have already shown a minimum with major suit wastage, so we can gleefully see our hand as being about the best it could be on the auction so far.

Thus I reject the natural 4N, and make the bid that is most likely to lay the foundation for a successful slam/grand slam try....4♦.

Partner will hold at least one major control on the auction, tho it may be a shortness control. Thus he will be able to bid 4♥ (a rare instance in which bidding a shortness control as one's first cue makes sense) either as a control or, if the methods permit, a generic last train cue. Either way, my 4♠ gets us back to where the immediate 4♠ cuebidders would have us, with the advantage that partner knows we are 4=5=2=2 with a working hand. We can't be 4=5=3=1 since we would bid 3♦ over 3♣. We can't have 6♥ because we are showing slam interest, and we would have shown the 6th heart earlier with a hand worth a slam try now (see OP).

I will respect a 5♦ signoff over 4♦, but I don't expect to hear it.

I see Zelandakh beat me to the criticism that 4♠ agrees clubs: brevity is often the soul of wit.

[JLOGIC]

A super hand? 5N? I feel like you guys are playing a different hand than me, I have 2 points in the minors and 4 cards in the minors and not even both major suit aces...our hand is horrible imo.

[JLOGIC]

For the record I bid 4D, don't see any need to do anything drastic at this point

[mikeh]

JLOGIC, on 2012-September-25, 09:23, said:

A super hand? 5N? I feel like you guys are playing a different hand than me, I have 2 points in the minors and 4 cards in the minors and not even both major suit aces...our hand is horrible imo.

I agree that driving to slam is too much, but how can this be a horrible hand?

The OP said that we have shown a minimum via 2♥. We hold a heck of a good minimum unless our first name is either Alvin or Tobias.

We then bid a regressive 3N, announcing no spade doubt, so probably a double stopper there.

We have bid precisely as we would have had we been AQJx KQxxx xx xx, or at least that is my take on the OP comments.

I am not sure what changes you'd make to our current hand in order for us to feel good about it on the auction to date. Surely our 4♦ strongly suggests 4=5=2=2 with the sort of working card count we hold?

[phil_20686]

mikeh, on 2012-September-25, 09:43, said:

We have bid precisely as we would have had we been AQJx KQxxx xx xx, or at least that is my take on the OP comments.

This is correct, but you might also have bid this way with:

AQxx Axxxx x Qxx.

For the record: 4H and 4S would be cues agreeing clubs.

[PhilKing]

Your hand is probably not that useful but who knows? Four Diamonds may get you to slam opposite:

♠xx
♥-
♦Akxxxx
♣Akxxx

And maybe partner is slightly better than that.

Four Spades definitely agrees clubs as far as I am concerned. And Four No Trumps is out, because we often go off with Five Diamonds cold.

[bluecalm]

4D. I think 4N should be reserved for 4-6-1-2 kind of hand or maybe KQxx KQxxx xx Qx

[lalldonn]

I don't think our hand is super or horrible. Certainly we have too much potential to just bid 4NT. But 4♦ seems like a fine bid. Of course partner only expects a doubleton after we didn't bid 3♦ last round.

[gszes]

our hand is bad but it is not completely hopeless. I would bid 4d here. I do
this mainly becasue i do not want p to get excited about the possibility we
might have almost no wasted values in hearts (which is what i would be saying
if i were to bid 4s or a 5c/5d bid). P will pretty much know our compete distribution and the
fact that we didnt feel our hand was as bad as it could be. If p wishes to
explore further i doubt our hand will be a huge disappointment.

Do not get me wrong this hand is very close to a 4n bid but the AK of spades
could easily be the difference btn slam or not. I would save 4n for something like

KQJx KQJxx xx xx

[the hog]

Preference to 4D looks obvious.

[phil_20686]

My partner bid five clubs with this hand. He argued that it is highly likely that this hand will play better in clubs than diamonds as with qx it is much less likely that clubs will need to be ruffed out than diamonds. I held

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And gave 5c another envisaging that partner would have three clubs to an honour.
They led a spade, and so I discarded my heart and played on diamonds. Everything was friendly so I made six clubs. But the auction didn't feel very satisfactory. ATB?

[JLOGIC]

The problem with your partners reasoning is that you will often be 6-5. I think the losses of playing clubs in those cases will far outweigh any gains of playing clubs rather than diamonds when you are equal length.