Sunday, June 25, 2006 12:27 PM

Inverted Minors III

PITBULLS:

In IMPS , games and slams are paramount. You devise a system to meet those objectives. Here is a hand that shows this objective well. ♠ Void ♥ KJxxx ♦ AKJ109x ♣ Kx . Partner surprises you by opening 1♦ ! I have seen matchpoint players afraid to suppress a 4 card major in lieu of an inverted minor but I would bypass a 5 card major and bid an inverted minor with this hand !!

With my partners , an inverted minor forces a relay. They would bid 2♥ in this sequence but they are allowed to break the relay with exceptional hands. A flat 18-19 hand is one of these hands so partner bids 2NT. ♠ KQx ♥AQx ♦Qxxx ♣AQx . Knowing that partner has 18-19 HCP my objective is to get to a grand slam if it is biddable. Looking at a big hand with a void , exclusion Blackwood comes to mind. I bid 4♠ and using the 0314 method , partner bids 5♥ showing 2 Aces & trump queen outside the spade suit.

Now one of the advantages of modern KCB in any form is a suit asking bid . Forcing this hand to 6NT , I now bid 6♥ as a suit ask. The “death response “ when partner goes beyond your 6 level contract is 6NT. Partner bids 6♠ saying she has the heart queen and you bid 7♦ and put your hand in the box before they lead. You announce to the opponents that partner has the diamond queen , the AQ of hearts and the Ace of clubs so you have 13 tricks. Do not let partner play this one !!

There are many ways to respond to exclusion Blackwood . Kantar just goes up the line but I do not like that as you have to use extra bids to find the queen. Kiz Fung has her own system that has the queen built into the responses with a maximum of two controls allowed to be shown. This is a good way in my opinion . Tom , BJ & I just flip KCB from 1430 to 0341 so we can have zero as the first step.