Intermediate 24/9/2015 Hand 14

Board 14 East Deals None Vul	♠ 10 9 7 3 ♥ 6 5 ♦ Q 7 4 ♣ K 7 5 3
♠ K J ♥ A K 9 ♦ K J 10 6 2 ♣ A Q 9	N W E S	♠ A 4 ♥ Q J 10 7 3 ♦ A 9 3 ♣ J 10 4
	♠ Q 8 6 5 2 ♥ 8 4 2 ♦ 8 5 ♣ 8 6 2

EW 7N; EW 7♥; EW 7♦; EW 5♣; EW 2♠; Par −1520

West	North	East	South
		1 ♥	Pass
2 ♦	Pass	2 ♥	Pass
4 NT	Pass	5 NT	Pass
6 ♣	Pass	6 ♦	Pass
7 ♥	All pass

Lead: ♠ 5

Many in ACOL open east with 1 NT, however the partnership needs agreement on how to locate 5-3 fits.
West has a 21 count and balanced shape. He knows pard is a minimum 11-14 hcp and has 5+ hearts. A combined 32-35hcp, so grand is a touch implausible, but not impossible. It is likely to need both hearts and diamonds to run. Diamonds are a problem. Pard "could" have the DQ - but even most advanced partnerships don't have mechanisms to find side suit queens.
Sure there are other possibilities eg east has Ax diamonds and a ruff "may" set up the suit, etc etc. All up, probably enough information to simply bid 6 NT (at MPs) over 2H, and with all the KJs and AQ 6 NT protects these from the opening lead. Doing 4 NT is OK though but it may give oppo opening lead information. The actual response of 5 NT looks like a CRO version of Blackwood, which takes up a lot of space for no real useful purpose. It has largely been superceded by the vastly superior RKCB. Over a 5 NT response showing 2 Aces of "Other", ie not same Colour or same Rank, 6C is presumably a King ask and 6D shows none. Over that West bids seven, which is odd as there is no reason for the king ask if u are going to take no notice of the response.

Opening leads against grand slams. These are fundamentally different to leads against small slams. Against small slams it may necessary to "set up" a trick which can be cashed when a lead is obtained. Thus a lead from a Q or a K may be OK, locating pard with the other non ace honour thus a trick obtained later in play. This does NOT apply to grand slams. Your sole aim is to not give away a trick. Trump leads are usually OK as nowadays RKCB (or lack of deploying it) would have established whether there is a trump issue or not.
Bird/Anthias - "It will usually be a poor idea to lead away from a king or queen...". Their language gets stronger " .. in 80-90% of grand slams the result is preordained(in the absence of some foolish lead from an honour)".
As it happened at the table the lead away from the honour did not cost a trick because oppo were 2-2 in spades

---