It was not a week for exciting or interesting hands. We played sleepily and got the result we deserved. In particular we bid two very bad slams. Board 24 was one of them.

After the routine 1D opening and 1S response West has to find a rebid. The hand has only 5 losers in support of spades which makes it strong enough to raise to game. It is our policy to describe the hand type rather then just raising to 4S. This could help the opponents with their lead but we feel it is more important to help partner judge slam prospects.

Our system in this position is to bid 4C or 4H as splinter bids showing a singleton or void in the suit bid and good trump support or to raise to 4S without a singleton. We also use a 4 level rebid in the opened minor to show a good suit in addition to trump support and this was Georgia's choice.

As East I had to decide how to proceed over 4D. As an optimist I pictured a hand such as AQxx/Ax/AKJ10xx/x opposite. Given good breaks in this would produce all 13 tricks. Therefore I tried for slam by cuebidding 5C. Our system is to cue aces or kings showing the lowest first so 5C denies a control in hearts so Georgia would have to bid 5S without a heart control.

Georgia chose to respond 5H to show the ace. I decided to bid 6C to show the KC as well as the ace in case we could bid a grand slam. It should be clear to my partner that I had at least one top spade as well as the top clubs in order to justify my bidding as I had denied values in hearts or diamonds. In retrospect perhaps I should have settled for 5S at this point which we would have made. Still that would have spoilt the story.

Georgia now bid 6D which in my view was an error. Knowing that the DK was missing she should have tried 6S which is very hard (impossible?) to make.

I decided that 6D was a master bid suggesting we play there. Perhaps she held Qxxx/A/AKQxxx/Qx where there are 12 tricks in diamonds but two trump losers in 6S. therefore I passed and the contract deservedly went down scoring us a complete bottom on the board.

Afterwards we could not agree if 4D was correct or not. I felt that a 4C splinter was the obvious choice on this essentially three suited hand but Georgia did not agree. The splinter would have made easy for me to downvalue the KC and sign off in 4S.

The moral of the story is that it is no good to have system agreements unless both partners understand them and know what type of hand to expect. Had we not had such a system Georgia would have raised to 4S and I would have passed and scored an average on the board.