Contract Bridge

You are South in each of the following three hands. What would you bid at the point where the question mark appears?

1. Pass. Partner’s one-heart bid is 100 percent forcing, but you are not obliged to bid after East intervenes with one spade. At this stage there is no way for you to know whether partner’s response was based on six, 10 or even more high-card points, nor can you tell what kind of distribution he has.

When East enters the auction with one spade, you are presented with an opportunity to tell partner, by passing, that you have no clear-cut action at this point. Partner has another bid coming after East’s overcall, and he can base his decision as to what to do next on what he is looking at plus the inference to be drawn from your pass.

2. Four notrump. Partner obviously has a one-track mind — he likes diamonds. He probably has seven of them to the A-Q-J or something similar, so your best action at this point is to find out how many aces he has.

Accordingly, you bid four notrump (Blackwood). You plan to pass if partner responds five diamonds, showing one ace; to bid six diamonds if he responds five hearts, showing two aces; and to bid seven diamonds if he responds five spades, showing three aces, even though there is a very slight risk that the grand slam might fail.

3. Three notrump. It would be wrong to bid only two notrump, since your first two bids could have been based on only 13 or 14 points. Since you have 17 points and have not yet shown your extra values, you should identify them now by jumping to three notrump.

If partner also happens to have extra values for his two previous bids, he may well continue bidding toward slam.