PHILIP ALDER

BRIDGE

Bridge players who do not understand their partner’s bids are in trouble. This week, we are looking at the splinter bid, which shows a good fit for partner’s suit, at least gamegoing values and a singleton (or void) in the suit just named.

Once, my partner opened one club. I had 15 high-card points with six clubs to the ace-kingqueen-jack. I also had a singleton spade, so I responded three spades. It went all pass! Then partner put a singleton spade down in the dummy! I tried hard to make it, but I unluckily ran out of trumps. Six clubs was cold.

In today’s deal, North’s four diamonds was a splinter bid. Then South used 14-30 Roman Key Card Blackwood, understandably believing that his partner had something in clubs to justify his gameforce. When North showed one key card (an ace or the spade king), South jumped to six spades.

West, who disliked leading from a jack, chose the club seven. After winning with dummy’s king, how did declarer play?

South saw that the danger was a 3-0 trump split. So, he called for the spade four and underplayed East’s three with his two! When dummy’s four held the trick, declarer drew one more round of trumps and discarded his club loser on dummy’s heart queen.

Note that if West could have taken the second trick, trumps would have been 2-1 and the contract safe — sort of. Tune in again tomorrow.