Convention Needed? Solution
You could try bidding 4 
and partner might find a 4 
call, but you are still a long far from home.
This hand, with only five losers, has plenty of potential. Having said this, it needs specific cards: the club king, the top trumps, and a diamond control. It is difficult to find all of this in standard methods, especially when this is plenty of hand outside of partner’s first-bid suit. But partner might have the right cards, with little in hearts.
The solution is the “serious 3NT.” Or at least an encouraging or waiting 3NT. We play that a cue bid in a suit bid by the partnership is an A or K, interchangeably. It is never shortness. 3NT gives partner a chance to show the K, and you have an easy control bid of 4 
.
Partner will then have a set shot, holding: 
A K 5 4 J 7 5 3 K Q 4 K 2.
You might contrive another auction to slam, but my guess is that few would bid it without the 3NT convention. When 3NT cannot logically be natural, it is waiting and encouraging.
Hi Jeff,
First, I’m so glad you’re blogging again, welcome back. Second, I’m struggling to come up with an answer so I’ll dump the internal monologue and hopefully y’all will be able to straighten me out.
This is a hard problem: Partner’s bidding definitely turns me on — if she’s going slamming then I wanna go too. My view, though, is that she took control of the hand when she started with 2D and then forced in spades and far be it from me to wrest control back when I don’t know what her hand is about. The majors, clearly. But my Partner is occasionally mysterious and what she has in mind is anybody’s guess.
I bid 4C because I want to show partner where I live; she can evaluate the Kx as easily as I (better, actually) and I believe it will help her to find out about a source of tricks in my hand. Her 4D cuebid is reassuring and I can cuebid my heart Ace letting Partner know my interest is indeed serious. If she signs off, I’m done. Judi and I have bid a zillion of these hands: cuebid, cuebid, cuebid, signoff. Sexy, but over.
3NT sorta barges in on her fun, says to Partner “show me whatchya got.” 4C from her will make me happy if I can be 100% it’s the King and not shortness; but even so all I can do now is bid 4H and I’m worried I will have endplayed Partner into signing off. No diamond cuebid from me so she’ll know we’re off an Ace there, and for all Partner knows I am cuebidding the heart King instead of the Ace, so we could be off two Aces and the Queen of trump. She can ask, but if I’m 4-3-1-5 with xxxx / KQx / x / AQJxx we might not even be safe at the 5-level.
On this bidding I am playing Partner for about a strong NT, since with any more she’d have launched into Keycard by now. So I look at my hand and re-bid it like that’s what had transpired: 1NT - 2C; 2H … I can bid 3C to show four spades and 5 clubs or I can bid 3S, unbalanced slam try and Partner will surely ask with 3NT. Then I bid 4H, showing my stiff. Poor Partner. Does she or doesn’t she? If I have the stiff x, we’re off two Aces.
So back to the top, I come out of hibernation with 4C because it feels like my best chance to get Partner to Keycard.
Where am I going wrong?
October 9, 2008 stacy
Because partner is unlimited, I would bid 4C with just about any hand as a “courtesy.” The “serious 3NT” works well because when I bid it, I’m choosing the stronger of two actions. Over partner’s next bid, I’m making 4H control bid, and then I’m finished.
October 9, 2008 MOJO
I understand the motivation for serious (or frivolous) 3NT, but I don’t like playing it unless we have a 5-4 major suit fit. When we have a 5-3 fit, 3NT is often an important choice-of-game bid, and when we have a 4-4 fit, it’s nice to have some way to say that my spade holding stinks even though the rest of my hand is good for slam (because it’s unrealistic to play another strain if we are stopping in game, but it may be vital to switch strains if we are slamming). One way to accomplish this is to make 3NT the cue of my first bid suit and make my first bid suit “bad spades” (and by inference a very nice first bid suit). If playing that, I think Q109x is good enough for 3NT, but with Q9xx, I would clearly bid 4C.
December 21, 2008 Christopher Monsour