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Yesterday I picked up this in the South hand: 15 HCP, 5 spades headed by Ace Queen, two small Hearts, a Diamond triplet led by the Ace and in clubs the King, Queen, small. This is a pretty standard 1NT opening for us. My partner had 5 hearts and 17 HCP!

We couldn't figure out a clean way of bidding this out: I open 1NT, partner bids 2D for a Jacoby transfer to Hearts, I bid 2H and now partner jumps straight to 6H, leaving no room to check if we have a fit. 6H turns out to be playable, but 6NT is the better contract here.

I later thought of a way to bid this. The auction would be: I open 1NT, partner uses Jacoby 2D to make me bid 2H. Now partner jumps to 6D; this should be an implicit question to bid 6H if I hold at least 3 hearts or 6NT on a doubleton.

Questions

  • Are there any biddings for such a type of hand? Preferably something that fits in our current Jacoby transfers.
  • Any obvious downsides to my proposal for rebidding the transfer at the 6-level?

2 Answers 2

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Assuming you are also playing Texas (highly recommended) then the Jacoby Transfer by Responder followed by a jump in the transfer suit always shows exactly 5 card length. This allows partner to jump to 6H, giving you the choice to correct to 6NT with only a doubleton, as you had.

If Partner has 6 card length sufficient to play slam opposite a small doubleton, then partner transfers at the 4-level and jumps to 6H, which is to play.

Don't even think about a 6D jump without serious partnership discussion. Both sides of the table will be wondering if it is telling or asking; and what precisely the subject of the tell/ask is.

Here are some additional agreements for Responder's rebid that are typically employed by partnerships playing both Texas & Jacoby:

  • Texas followed by 4NT = Blackwood (your usual variant)
  • Jacoby followed by 4 NT = Quantitative
  • Jacoby followed by 4C = Gerber
  • Jacoby followed by 4 of the transfer suit = slam interest with a weak 6 card suit
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  • Thanks! I didn't know about Texas Transfers. Of course the 6D/6H bids, if we'd decide to do that, would be thoroughly discussed with Partner and be put on the system sheet.
    – steenbergh
    Commented Jul 13, 2018 at 5:38
  • I think Jacoby followed by 4C is more typically (and better) played as a splinter, showing a 6 card suit, singleton or void in clubs, with slam possible opposite a suitable hand (e.g. one with no values in clubs). After all, if you only needed key card information, there is always texas followed by 4N.
    – Alexander Woo
    Commented Jul 24, 2018 at 1:03
  • @AlexanderWoo: Yes, that is a more modern treatment. It sacrifices the ability to implicitly suggest to Opener a correction to same level of NT, while a Blackwood auction would then discourage same. A sound partnership will have discussed all these continuations.
    – Forget I was ever here
    Commented Jul 24, 2018 at 1:11
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We've decided on the 6 Diamonds/6 Hearts repeat of the Jacoby Transfer for several reasons:

  • Not having an agreement for this might lead to stopping at 3NT or 4Major, missing Slam, or as happened, put us in the wrong slam.
  • The decision to go for slam should be the responder's choice, and with 6D/H you jump over any game score straight to Slam. Furthermore, if responder is incredibly strong or opener transferred to the 3-level instead of staying at 2 (indicating the maximum NT opening), responder may go to grand slam.
  • The meaning of repeating the Jacoby transfer at the 6-level is very clear; it's not a thing that will happen very often, so when it does it has a certain elegance and clear meaning about it.
  • And with respect to the existing, very educational answer: it saves us from integrating another convention into the mix. My partner and I discussed Texas, and we feel it adds very little to how we play Jacoby right now. The only addition would be this specific case.

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