[Lord Molyb]

I was playing in a tournament and came across 2 grand slams in a row, neither of which were bid. Please assign the blame for both.

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Obviously 7 was made after trumps were drawn (2-2) and a heart was ruffed.

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Trumps split 2-1 so it was easy.
Who was responsible for both?

[aguahombre]

I won't impose our agreements about 4m serving a dual purpose on these auctions where so much space has been used up (setting trump and optional Minorwood combined).

But, when a grand is missed, the partner who bounced to 6 is usually to blame. You still might not get there, but what's the hurry?

In the first case, 5N over 5C could only be Josephine; and there are 3 possible replies, so 6D will get us to 7.

[JLOGIC]

The first one definitely should have been easy. Easiest would have been through use of keycard (over 4D if west had bid 4S cuebid since he has a spade control, that would allow 4N by east then 7D).

After cuebidding 5C you need good agreements. For instance if you play 5N keycard by east that would work. If you play 5N grand slam force, west could bid 6C showing 1 of the top 2, but east still really doesn't know if 5C was the CA (wouldn't west bid 5C with xx xx AJxx KQTxx type hands?), so that doesn't work unless he wants to gamble on 5C being the ace.

And as a practical matter that might horrify mikeh, west could just keycard over 4D, his hand is plenty strong enough when partner opens 2C and bids 2N then shows diamonds. It's very unlikely you're off the AK of hearts, and even when you are if you don't cuebid they still have to find the lead blind. If west keycards over 4D then queen asks then indicates all of them east can bid a grand.

Basically, east will bid a grand if he ever knows partner has both aces.

[rogerclee]

First one west, keycard is a great convention. Not crazy at all for him to guess to bid 7D over 6D either, given how bad his previous bid is. East could have done more but I am not particularly used to my partners not just bidding keycard with two aces opposite a huge hand and a fit, so he probably just thought his partner was only interested in 5 vs 6.

Second one, I think 4D shows a minimum, and I would not call the east hand that. Despite the club "waste" he knows that they are in a big fit (4C is almost always 5+D) and he has a stiff, so I would have cuebid 4H. West bids keycard and finds out his partner has two aces and the king of clubs but I don't think that's enough to bid 7, so I wouldn't get there. BTW you don't need diamonds 2-1, there are 13 tricks even after 3 rounds of trumps as long as there is no club ruff.

[Cyberyeti]

I don't like the 2♣-2N way of bidding this, we bid:

1♦-2♦
2♠-3♣
4N-5♥
7♦

All E needs to know is that W has 4 diamonds, 2 aces and no more than 6 major suit cards which the above auction suggests.

If 5♣ has to be the ace, GSF will get you there, but if not, W should bid 4♠ to allow 4N keycard as 2 aces sums up his hand.

On the second one, I just don't think there's the room to find everything out, the best I can do is find out that E is non minimum, has 2 aces and the K♣ (thus has something else) now Q♣ or Q♥ and you're probably fine xxxx, AQ, AJxxx, Kx would be unfortunate, but Q♠ will be insufficient.

[gszes]

hand 1
While i am not a fan of the 2n rebid it worked wonders here when p
bid 3s ---once you decide to bypass 3n (at mps) we have a super simple
4n call asking for aces with a super safe 5d sign off if p has zero 6d if they
have 1 and 7d if they have 2 it has to be regular blackwood because we did
not set the trump suit first.

hand 2 if 1 of West hearts is a spade 7 has almost no chance and there is no way
to find out the distribution. Having said that i really hate the 4d bid which suggests
a minimum when you have 5 diamonds and lots of controls cue bid 4h not a wimp
4d bid. Even the best bidding sequence after 4c will probably not find 7d it is a lucky
distribution hand.