 At our table the bidding sequence was:
(1). Preemptive 3 Clubs by west. This is a perfect preemptive bid that sews the seeds for all the later damage. With more bidding space N/S would have been able to find out much more about their respective hands.
(2) 3 Heart overcall. This seems the correct bid and could either signal a second preemptive bid (promising 7 hearts plus a low score) or - perhaps as few as 5 Hearts but a much stronger hand.
(3) 4 Clubs by East. With A holding if Ace and two others in partner's suit East knows they have 10 of their preferred trumps, so the chances are they would get seven Club tricks plus a couple of through cross-trumping.
(4) South (myself) then bid 4 No Trumps using Blackwood to ask for aces. I would have bailed out if North hadn't promised an Ace but it certainly seemed to be worth taking a look. My reasoning was that if partner's 3 Hearts was weak, then we would have all the trumps, none of which would have to be played on each other except to move back and forth between the hands. The singleton Ace of diamonds promised trumping possibilities in that suit. I also figured thwt East would not have raised the preemptive Club bid had they not had at least two cards in the suit. My holding of three placed a maximum of one with North. If that happened to be the Ace of clubs then this suit would not present any problems either. Possible responses to Blackwood would be 5 Diamonds (promising one of the two missing aces) or 5 Hearts (promising two) . In the first case I probably would have bailed out and signed off with a bid of 5 hearts. In this case North may raise it to 6 Hearts on the basis that the Club void adds even more strength to the hand. If North had promised two aces I would probably have jumped straight to 6 hearts - the reasoning being that with all four aces, hearts, clubs and diamonds are all solid and we only have to worry about a maximum of two Spade tricks. (With three Aces, It is not safe to ask for kings as this takes you to the six level and if partner has just one or two kings then the slam contract fails).
In all honesty I didn't have my moves planned when I went for Blackwood. I just had a feeling that the hand must have slam potential.
Perhaps the best bid for South is 4 or 5 hearts, possibly leaving it for North to take it even further. If South thinks they can make 4-5 hearts without knowing about North's Club void, then even greater achievements may be possible. I think North would raise the invitational 5 Hearts to six. In contrast 4 Hearts is likely to be interpreted as a shut-out bid and therefore go nowhere.
In short, I still have no idea how best to bid this hand. If the bidding hadn't started with the preemptive 3 clubs, N/S shouldn't have much difficulty finding the slam: N - 1 heart; East - Pass; S - 3 hearts promising the fit in hearts plus at least ten points. Having established the fit, North can now find slam-worthy points: - 14 high card points plus 6 shortage points for the Club void and the Spade doubleton, plus 10 points just promised by partner. Using Gerber then finds an Ace and a King missing and the chances are that at least one of these is a club and so poses no threat to North.
I'd be interested to hear what more experience players have to say about this hand.
Cheers,
Don Mitchell
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