Should bidders take "controls"into account when trying to bid a no trump slam?

Question

By "controls," I mean the situation whereby an ace is worth two controls, and a king one. Given four aces and four kings, there are 12 controls in all.

If two partners have 31 (random) high card points between them, they are favorites to make 6 NT (35 points for 7NT). Therefore, if partner opened a strong 1NT, I would, in theory, raise to 4NT with 15 high card points (quantitative), asking partner to go to 6NT with 17 or a good 16, and pass otherwise.

One obvious danger is that even if a partnership has 31 points, it will still go down if the opponents have two aces, and may go down if they have an ace and king, particularly of the same suit), within their nine points. That's because the opponents have four and three controls, respectively, leaving the declarer with only eight or nine. The declaring side should have at least 10 controls to go with their 31 points (off only one ace or two kings) to bid 6NT.

So I would be happy to raise 1NT to 4NT with a 15-pointer like the following:

♠ Axx ♡ Axx ♢Qxxx ♣ AJx. This has six controls (more than my "fair share" of 4.5). Even if partner had all the remaining "quacks" (queens and jacks), it would be impossible to have 16 points without at least 3 controls, and nearly all 16 point hands would have 4.

On the other hand, there is only one control in this 15 pointer: ♠KQJx ♡ QJx ♢QJx ♣ QJx. Even with "17," partner could be off two aces. So I would be reluctant to raise to 4NT with this hand. In fact, I would prefer to raise to 4NT with a slightly weaker version of the first hand (remove the jack to reduce the point count to 14, but maintain six controls): ♠ Axx ♡ Axx ♢Qxxx ♣ Axx.

Is my concern about controls reasonable in this instance?

Answer 1

Of course you should be concerned about controls. If you don't have control of all suits, and first round control of three, you're not making 6.

Control count is a good way to determine this, if your system has the tools available. Standard usually doesn't. Many strong club systems use it, but starting with the initial response (or ZZ/Queen points, where A=3, Kx=2, Qx(x)=1) to a strong club opener.

But there's another half of slam: you can have 0 or 1 loser, but not 12 winners. Your 15 count takes tricks, if your partner has the controls. Your 14-count - does not. You could easily have two slow losers and no suit to set up.

I definitely would not be putting a "control count minimum" on my 1NT openers; history has taught that taking some balanced range (whatever one it is) out of the other bids improves the rest of the system, and having to deal with "what do I do with my control-poor 16 I didn't show last round in this auction" is a long-term loser.

How do you resolve this? Traditionally, by requiring 33 for 6NT (so you can't be off two aces). Yes, 31 will make 6NT more often than not (double-dummy, at least; I'm not 100% at guessing 2-way finesses for the Queen) as long as you have 3 aces.

How do you find that out? Not by quant - but by Gerber. If you need to know both - then you need a quantitative ask after Gerber (not 4NT - that's reserved for "oops, not enough aces.")

How do you do that? Don't ask me - I don't play Gerber. I find the temptation of partners to use it when it is wrong (i.e., except for "I know we have 12 tricks if we don't lose 2 first") loses me more than not having it the three times a year it is right[1].

But your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to work out how to Gerber then quantitative, keep the quantitative, and be able to Gerber with 8 K85 QJ6 KQT962 after partner's 2NT to get to 6NT opposite 3 aces (the traditional use)[2].

1. In addition, playing a weak NT in my primary partnership, being able to right-side 4M (using 4m to say "you play it" and 4M to say "I'll play it") is much more frequent. In my strong NT partnerships, it's more of a "safety play".
2. Real hand. We scored 4/13 for 6♣, because "everybody" just Gerbered and went. They got lucky; they were missing ♠AQJ, where it could easily have been ♠AK.

Answer 2

To answer this question from a different tack; The 1NT opening ought to be oriented towards finding games not slams, and there are far better tools to handle controls for a slam.

In No Trumps, obviously you can't lack control in any suit with 34+ points. (Long suits are helpful but don't substitute for absent control elsewhere).

With less points (30+) look for a suit-slam first. You must find your fit, but may upgrade it to NT later if your controls are sound. When you don't see the suit slam then a NT slam is extremely unlikely! (The 33-point mark is a borderline and quantitative 4NT may help shortcut to a minor-suit fit)

In suits, control-showing may reveal whether 4NT (Blackwood et al.) is appropriate, but make sure you're 1NT response will set 4NT to RKCB instead of quantitative!. Then it's a question of whether you've got control over every suit and sufficient long tricks, rather than how many controls.

Holding a lot of controls in responder's hand just indicates opener must therefore have less than average controls, and it won't solve many problems.

Neither example looks appealing for a slam try. (There's a saying, when you need to hope partner holds perfect cards, its unlikely). However, add a doubleton, find a 5-3 fit elsewhere (eg with puppet stayman) and then find 5 keycards, and your suit or even NT slam has traction in either case.