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Adventures of a bridge professional

Adventures of a bridge professional.
Columns by Dutch National Team player Sjoert Brink. Check out the section Columns

Only invitational or forcing and very strong? *
A 3windroosK Q J 8
Q J 10 6 3A K 7 4
K 10 4 Q J 3
Q 7 5
A 4

WestNorthEastSouth
11pass1pass
1NTpass3pass
passpass  

1 EW open four-card majors

To state it as friendly as possible: 3 is a safe contract. This is one contract that is not going to be defeated... Critical spirits may however remark that 6, bar an unlikely ruff, is cold.
East: 'I think you shouldn't have passed 3, it's forcing.'
West: 'I thought it was invitational.'
Who is right, who is wrong?

Solution

East was right, West shouldn't have passed 3. West forgot an important rule: 'show invitational strength plus a fit in partner's major at once.'
But East did not raise directly to 3 (10-11 points, invitational). He showed his heart support 'via the long way', so the message is that he is too strong for a direct, invitational jump. He shows more than 11 points therefore. On closer inspection: a lot more, since West's 1NT bid showed 12-14 HCP. With 12-16 points (including distributional points!) East would simply have settled for game by bidding 4 in the second round; a slam is not an option with a combined point count of 24-30.
So East has more than 16 points! His 3 bid is not only forcing, it is slam invitational at least.

East requests West to show controls. After all, from East's point of view both the A and the K could have been missing.
West should have bid 3 therefore, control showing. The auction would have developed like this:

WestNorthEastSouth
...
...
3pass
31pass41pass
41pass4NTpass
5pass
6pass
passpass  

Compare this auction — and especially East's 3 bid — with a seemingly (!) similar auction here.

Some additions for diehards:
1. East shows at least four hearts, since West's 1NT still only shows four (though five is possible of course). If the 1opening had shown five, East could have bid like he did with only three hearts.
2. Nowadays over West's 1 opening many top players as East will bid 2NT: conventional, strong, heart fit. In Europe known as Truscott without the double or Stenberg, at the other side of the Atlantic as Jacoby-2NT. Opinions differ whether the bid is game forcing or can be made on invitational strength as well. (2NT has lost its natural meaning therefore, but that is not a great loss, since with a balanced hand without a heart fit East can usually start with two in a minor.)
3. If East has only three hearts and invitational strength (10-11 points) he is in a fix after 1 (if West can have opened on a four-card suit, that is), since he is a heart short for a direct invitational jump raise to 3. So he may bid 1 then, like here (assumed he has four spades of course).
- If West now rebids 2/, East can jump-rebid 3, showing that kind of hand (four or more spades, three hearts, 10-11 points).
- But if West rebids 1NT, East cannot jump-rebid 3, since it is slam invitational, as we have seen. His best bet is then a raise to 2NT. The risk is that West passes with a minimum and five hearts — meaning EW miss the 5-3 heart fit, a disadvantage of opening four-card majors. (A convention like Check-back Stayman solves this problem, by the way).

Read here about a similar — but not identical — bidding sequence in which responder supports his partner's opening suit by way of a jump-rebid.