[Orla]

Playing tourney tonight with a pick up "expert" the following hand came up.
I was holding:
♠ Q 8 4 3
♥ A 5 3
♦ A K Q J 5 4
♣ Void

I open 1♦ in second seat - P bids 2♣ - I bid 2♠
P then bids 3♥ - doubled by RHO. I bid 3NT.

Obviously this was not asking for stoppers, since P took me out of 3NT and bid 4♣. I bid 4♦ 'cause I really do not like ♣.

4NT by P (RKBW, I am (correctly) assuming) I bid 5♣ (3 keycards)

This is doubled by LHO, and passed by partner.

What do I bid?

I stupidly trusted my partner's ****"decision" - thinking he had a handful of clubs I passed. And had to suffer his ranting and nasty comment for rest of tourney.

P was holding.
♠ A J 6
♥ Q 9 8
♦ 6 4
♣ A Q J 6 4

It was an absolute bottom. "Normal bid" is 3NT +++.

Can anyone shed light into my partner's bidding? He was not forthcoming.
Can anyone "explain" to me how I am to understand what P is trying to say? And can anyone explain to me when it is ok not to trust P and to ride roughshod over his ****"decisions"?

Somehow I do not feel I should be scapegoat .....


rla

**** taking me out of NT and then bidding Blackwood, made him boss, I think.

[han]

If you play with a partner that is not very good at bridge then you will get some bad scores.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

#1 mark him, and dont play with him any more.
#2 mark him, and dont play with him any more.
#3 mark him, ...
#4 ...

With kind regards
Marlowe

[smiffy]

I think there are two possible explanations for his bids. Either he was getting excited by your reverse and was looking, somewhat awkwardly, for a slam - a very optimistic fellow - or he was just a nutcase.
Either way i think the crux here is the bid of 4 clubs. If it is natural it is a very, very terrible bid. If it is a slam-searching bid i think it's "just" bad - with no (good) fit, both hands seemingly balanced and a combined point count of ~30 that he could safely rely on.
I also think that after having you taken out of 3nt by bidding 4 clubs and having heard your 4 diamonds bid, 4nt, whatever it is, it's not to play. And having passed your 5 clubs response himself you have every right to pass it yourself, even doubled. No problem at all.
Mind though that i am not an expert and maybe, just maybe, there is something to his bidding that someone who actually is one can analyze so that i does it make sense after all.

[1eyedjack]

What everyone else said, BUT ...

*IF* 4NT is RKCB then a trump suit is agreed, expressly or inferentially. That you chose to include the Diamond King as a key card suggests to me that, at the point of responding to RKCB, you at least reckoned Diamonds to be the agreed trump suit. It takes, I think, a finely tuned regular partnership to go changing the trump suit mid-Blackwood. But if you stick to the assumption that Diamonds is the agreed trumps then passing out 5C doubled does not rate to be a winning action (assuming that by now there IS a winning action). Partner's bidding was totally Ratner, but even so I would not have passed it out.

BTW it may not be something for a pickup partnership, but may be worthwhile considering using pass of the double to show a guard but wanting to declare 3N the other way up.

You say that your assumption that 4NT was RKCB was "correct". What makes you so sure? Did he say so afterward? The hand itself is not far removed from a quantitative 4N in my opinion.