Contract Bridge

Without an explanation, the bidding by North on this deal suggests that he may have taken leave of his senses, but nobody would criticize the final contract, which is laydown. It just goes to show that crazy-looking bids can be very successful, even though they don’t mean what they seem to say.

A number of years ago, some genius (according to the Official Encyclopedia of Bridge, it was Dorothy Hayden Truscott) came up with the idea that a jump-shift response one level higher than necessary indicates a void or a singleton in the suit bid, adequate support for partner’s last-bid suit and sufficient values for at least a game, with a potential for slam opposite a fitting hand. That accounts for North’s three-spade bid, commonly called a “splinter bid.”

Certainly the North hand is ideally suited for such a convention. The moment partner opens one heart,

North should start thinking in terms of a slam. From North’s viewpoint, the key to the slam is South’s holding in spades and clubs. South could have spade strength and three club losers, or, ideally, club strength and three spade losers.

The three-spade bid thus encourages South, who has no wasted values in spades, to cooperate by cuebidding the ace of clubs.

North is delighted to hear this bid, leaving South’s trump holding the only question remaining to be resolved. Accordingly, North next invokes the “grand slam force” convention by leaping to five notrump. This commands South to bid seven hearts if he holds two of the top three trump honors.

So South dutifully bids the grand slam, with full confidence that North has not gone completely berserk.