for posterity!

[omegabeth]

Last rubber of the night. Mostly crap cards for me and protagoras, okay play with what we've gotten, but down 2000+ points.

The bidding:
protagoras opens with 3 Hearts.
conspiratrix passes.

I am looking at:

♣: AKQJ9

♦: AKx

♥: Ax

♠: Axx

me: 7 Hearts.
everyone: WHAT?!
me: 7 Hearts.

J: pass

*pause*

J, (to

Comments

[dbang]

Why hearts and not clubs, given the long suit?

[omegabeth]

His 3 Heart opener guarantees 7 hearts, so we have at least 9 between us.

[fraterrisus]

... 3H opening without the A or K of trump and no other A? did opener have nineteen cards in suit or am I missing something? :)

[omegabeth]

Yah--it's lighter than I might do it, but standard rule of thumb for pre-empts is 2 of top 3 or 3 of top 5, and the suit was7 cards and solid, just to the queen. (But yeah, I totally thought he had the king.)

[fraterrisus]

by "7+solid" do you mean opener had QJT9876-H ? it's been a while since i really looked at the math behind preemptive threes... i guess the move to slam makes total sense if you've got AK-H in the partnership but you were definitely taking a chance on needing to finesse the KH. in your shoes, i'd have made exactly the same assumption :)

neat hand!

[omegabeth]

Yep, that's what he had!

[vibrantabyss]

You don't have a convention to ask about the K of hearts there? Specifically, 4NT as Roman Key Card would have the answer in one safe step...

[omegabeth]

We don't use Key Card, just straight Blackwood. (which we've used...twice, maybe, in the 2 years we've been playing together. Using Precision-style 1 club seems to help clarify where we need to be before we get to that point, but that is a different discussion.) And, in this case, knowing he doesn't have the K just makes me think harder about the odds before I jump :-).

[vibrantabyss]

Makes sense, I guess. 'Tis the season for bridge, it seems, you are the 3rd person posting and/or calling games after seeing no mention of it for close to a year =D

[muffyjo]

Nicely played! I know just enough bridge to get into trouble and not enough to get out. I've been around it for most of my formative years but only played it for one evening.

[blk]

Ha! That's awesome! Sad that it didn't make, but yes, that was totally the odds-on thing to do! Man, I don't think I've ever had occasion to bid grand slam. I suspect I'd be far too timid to, but I just might, if that hand came up.