Ricco Van Prooijen's Unusal 5NT

You'll have to go Board 29 (after the jump)

The 5NT bid by Rico Van Prooijen of the Ned Aut team definitely drew a reaction from me as I was watching.

The 1NT bid is one I have come to favour over recent months. A strong NT should be a 6-7 loser hand. It should be your hands in the point range. Here you have a bit too much stuffing and prime cards but then you have no good rebid over 1♠ - except maybe with a nebulous diamond?

Marion Michielson then excellently and fortunately judges her hand worth a quantitative raise. Now there are three conventional ways to respond to this:

1. Plain Vanilla: pass or bid 6NT
2. Ace Ask: pass or show number of Aces (0,1,2..)
3. Baron: bid 4-cd suits upwards

Option number two would probably be the most sensible as with number three you are opening your self to a bad trump split and defensive ruffs. For this reason you would only use three when the bulk of your points are in two suits - which may have the advantage of making partner declarer and protecting their holding in the other suits. For example:

Kx

AKxx

AJxx

Jxx

xx

QTx

KQxx

AKQx

This could produce the reverse auction.

Anyway Marion eventually made the sensible decision that this could not be one or two and thus must be three and helped win her side a deserved 16 imps.

 weake