Another Sectional Hand

Will give the hand that decided the last match in the sectional, we did not win, far from it, but this hand went a long way towards deciding the winners as we were playing the 2nd place team that had a shot at the win. (They had run out of other teams for them to play I guess :) )

You hold a pretty nice hand as dealer with no one vul, AKx --- AJ98xx AQxx and open 1D. The opps are silent throughout and partner bids 1H. I do not like jumping with a void in partners suit, but I can not conceive of a way of bidding this hand later if I do not, and it is a nice picture bid, so I jumped to 3C. Partner now bid the expected 3H and I bid 3S, not sure if 3N is not better, but I may not have any tricks on a Spade lead if I do, so wait and see again. Partner now bids 4D, and the question is, how strong is that? I am working under the assumption in this auction that we are in a GF auction now, with my bidding, so if partner had a truly bad hand, 3N and 5D were available, so in theory, 4D should show values. I do not play regular with today's partner, so there are no really solid agreements in place, but I trust him and that is the general nature of how we treat hands and have talked about. But I do have a lot of losers on this hand, so for better or worse, I decided to under bid for once and bid 5D. I really believe the correct bid here is 4S, showing the second Spade card and letting partner make the decision, since I have shown my hand at that point, but did not bid it, sigh :)

The opening lead is a small Spade and partner puts down a very good dummy, xx AQxxxx KTx xx, oops, that will teach me to mastermind on a hand. Anyways, I still have a potential lot of losers, lets hope they will materialize, since the pair at the other table are quite agressive and can be expected to be in the slam. So I won the AK of Spades, ruffed a Spade, all following, if the carding can be believed, probably 4-4 in Spades, and led a Club to the Q and K. A Heart now came back, so I won the A, pitching a Club, cashed the K of Diamonds, played a Club to the A and ruffed a Club. Now ruffed a Heart back to hand and cashed the A of Diamonds, and luck was in today, the Q did not appear as RHO pitched another Heart. So I wound up making 5D exactly, hoping they did bit the slam, since as nothing was working, it appears you must always lose 2 tricks.

Except a funny thing happened at the other table, on the same start of 1D-1H, the person with my hand elected to next bid 2C only, and his partner now bid 3H. Not sure what I would have done over that, but the 4H bid at the table should have play on high card alone, but the bad Hearts in partners hand meant there were 4 losers in Hearts, so we did win 13 Imps, the hard way. I have a lot of sympathy for the 3H bid, since by not using 4th suit forcing, it implies a hand very like what he had. It shows the problem of not bidding 3C though, since you are now caught on the hand. If partner has all values in Hearts, and a little better suit, 4H becomes an excellent contract. But on this hand, you lose the chance at what was actually not a bad slam in Diamonds, with only 1 real problem, it doesn't make.

Not sure what the correct or best sequence is, but it is a good hand to talk about with your regular partner, where would you get to and would you be happy with the result.