BRIDGE MASTERCLASS

WHAT would you respond on this hand after partner, West, opens 1 ♠ ? THIS is the same theme as yesterday — making your best choice of bid at your first opportunity. it is quite easy to do when you are able to assess in which final contract you would expect to play. Here you know straight away that you will play in a spade slam. Your only concern is whether you might have a trump loser, otherwise you could expect to make all the tricks.

if you agree with the judgment thus far, you have a perfect bid, which will discover how good are partner’s spades; this is 5nt, known as the Grand slam Force, which asks partner to tell you how many of the top three honours he holds; with one, he responds 6 ♠ and with two, 7 ♠ . You will be in trouble if partner has opened 1 ♠ on Jxxx, but then you’ll have the same problem with any other auction.

Your alternatives to 5nt are either a swiss or splinter 4 ♣ bid — but the hand is much too strong for this bid, or a forcing jump to 3 ♥ , which will be unnecessarily cumbersome and might even help the defence to find a killing lead. at the table, the West hand is: ♠ KQ10xx, ♥ x, ♦ KQxxx, ♣ Qx; the simple auction is 1 ♠ - 5nt; 7 ♠ , and the contract is unbeatable — on a combined 29-count.