Intended audience: Intermediate and up

E-W vul, matchpoints, as south you hold: ♠A986 ♥- ♦KQJ107 ♣10965

¹Artificial game forcing.

What do you bid?

Partner has a game forcing hand with 3+ diamonds and some slam interest. You opened a 10 HCP hand with a void in partner’s suit. The normal way to show a minimum hand with no slam interest, which at first blush this is what you have, is to jump to 5♦.

Here, however, 5♦is the wrong bid for two reasons. Despite the above facts, this is not a drop dead minimum.

South has two key cards and the trump queen and suit solidity. We do not want to discourage partner. The other more critical issue is that by jumping to the five level you take away partner’s ability to ask for key cards, which is what he wanted to do here.

Partner held ♠K♥AKJ87 ♦A32 ♣AK42 and had to guess what to do over 5♦, and guessed wrong when he bid 6NT.

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