Hearts or spades: What’s the best way to play this hand?

With the COVID-19 pandemic canceling most in-person games and tournaments, bridge players are invited to try out our weekly quiz to keep up their skills.

Today’s quiz: We continue this week with another quiz on responding to a takeout double. In the following problem, neither side is vulnerable and your left-hand opponent (the dealer) opens with one diamond. Partner then doubles and your righthand opponent passes. What would you do and why? Your hand:

S KQ73 H KQ73 D 52 C Q62

Answer: With partner having shown an opening hand or better, and you holding a hand worth 13 points, game is a virtual certainty, but in which suit — hearts or spades? Partner could have only three cards in one of the majors, and you would like to avoid winding up with that suit as trump.

The way to resolve this dilemma is to make the one response that partner cannot pass — a cuebid in the opponent’s suit announcing that you have a good hand but have no clear- cut action. In the given auction, you would therefore respond to the double by bidding two diamonds.

In all likelihood partner will answer in his longer major, and you can then raise that suit to game. In the very unlikely case that partner responds to the cuebid with three clubs, you can then bid three hearts to emphasize that you, by inference, have both majors and let him make the final decision.

Observe that this type of cuebid could be used on a similar hand containing a few less points — say 9 to 11 — and in that case, after partner responded in his better major, you could make an invitational raise to three that partner could pass if his double was based on minimum values.