Test Your Forcing Pass Understandings
Playing IMP’s, red on white, you pick up the following hand as dealer:
K Q J 7 4, 
K T 9 5 
T 6 3 
A.
You open 1 and see LHO bid 3, partner calls 4, and RHO bids 6.
What do you call and why? In particular, does your action refer to hand quality, clubs, or both?
Double.
My rationale: A pass is forcing, and therefore indicates a hand that has some interest in 6S, but isn’t certain. Thus with 2 quick losers, or wasted high cards in clubs, you would double. With extra trick-taking power, you would bid. With something in the middle, you pass. I think this hand, while it has good spades and the club ace, falls into the first camp (i.e. double). A close second choice is pass. You have lots of losers in the red suits, and your club ace may be opposite partner’s possible void. Your spade jack probably doesn’t add any value to the hand either - if partner has 4- or 5-card support, you really don’t need it - Kxxxx would be just as good, with your QJ being more valuable in another suit.
November 29, 2006 Mark Kinzer
Mark Kinser has touched all the bases pretty well on this problem. I would only add that as auctions get elevated quickly, the understandings that we had with slower auctions where we knew we were in slam range have to wilt in favor of general bridge judgment. The extreme pressure on this hand is a perfect example. You can’t afford to pass 6C just to show the club control when you have a hand that doesn’t justify inviting the slam. I play that 4C shows more than a mere game raise (since with that I would have bid 4S to describe the value of my cards) . Even so, I think that I must tell partner that I am not well positioned to have him bid the slam. That means dbl.
November 29, 2006 M Huston
Now suppose the bid on your right is 5C instead of 6C. Do you pass or bid 5S?
November 30, 2006 Christopher Monsour
One of the main purposes of this site is to develop effective understandings. Because I have many other responsibilities, I do not update frequently enough to make this a daily stop for members of our group who are interested. People could subscribe to the RSS feed to alert them, but most of my friends are not up on this technology. This means that many problems of interest are done the old way — talking to friends and posing the problem.
I talk with my favorite partners and my favorite bidding guru’s, always giving my own hand. So the telephone poll must supplement the blog poll until we get more of the team into gear.
At the moment the vote is split as follows:
Voting for a pass: Brad, Phil, Beatty.
Voting for a double: Wickham, Ralph.
Those passing view partner’s bid as unlimited, and feel that they have extras for an opening bid. In particular, they cite hands where partner might have Axxx of spades and/or two small clubs where the trumps and club control might be relevant.
Those doubling construct various good hands for partner where slam has no play.
So the question might turn to what sort of hand should partner have to bid slam? The passers were imagining hands where pard had Axx or Axxx of spades and great outside values without a club control. The fact is that the 4 club bid covers a lot of territory.
It comes back to my original proposition: Does a pass show some huge hand, or something more than the opening bid with a club control. I agree with Mike Houston that it should not be “just the club control.”
Phil and Steve commented that we cannot rule out slam, and have some of the right cards. So what should we expect from partner? I am interested in nominations for what hands are suitable acceptances in this case.
BTW — as someone who has read The Bridge World’s MSC for 40 years, I have learned that any reasonable action has support. Players may have strong opinions, but if they are open-minded, they learn that other good players have different strong opinions.
December 10, 2006 Jeff Miller
I’m with the passers; doubling seems too chicken to me.
Passing shows extras; double is a warning. Clubs are just going to have to work themselves out.
As to Chris’ question of what to do over 5C, I’d more contentedly pass. I can honor a double, pass a 5S bid, or bid a slam over any try. That’s easier.
Against bad opponents, you could bid 6S counting on the opponents to bid 7C, but such opponents are in regrettably short supply.
–JRM
December 16, 2006 JRM