Reversed splinter bids

Anton Maas ( Netherlands )

Anton Maas  is a bank manager in Amstelveen, Netherlands . He won a gold medal in the European Mixed Teams in 1994. Other than that, the highest and lowest spot of his bridge career was in 1982. He and his partner, Max Rebattu, were announced as the winners of the World Pairs. However, shortly afterwards, a scoring error came to light and he was demoted to the silver medal position. He has won bronze medals in the 1980 Teams Olympiad, the 1992 European Mixed Teams and the 1994 Olympiad Pairs. He is married to Bep Vriend, the most successful Dutch woman player of all time.

During the last two decades bridge has made much progress in bidding theory. Each month magazines publish new conventions, many of which cover the very difficult field of slam bidding. Not new, and very common, are methods to show a short suit after a fit is established, for example fragment and splinter bids. Although splinter bids can be extremely useful, the method has a serious drawback. It can make it easy for the opponents to find a fit. Who has not experienced opponents saving in Five Clubs/Five Diamonds, not vulnerable against vulnerable, after doubling your splinter bid ? Very nasty, especially at Pairs. All they have to do is to double a bid at the four level with KQ109xx and an ace; not very risky.

The examples are numerous, and I will present only two that cropped up recently.

My first hand occurred in the Dutch Open Teams Championship:

To some extent East-West did well. West doubled to show minimum values and East decided not to push on to Five Hearts, but +300 did cost 8 IMPs.

The next deal, from a Pairs tournament, shows that things can turn out even worse:

¹ 5-card major

²splinter

North passed over Five Diamonds to show maximum hand and South, with no wasted values, accepted the push. Although the contract is quite reasonable (even a slam is not that bad), in practice it had no chance; West led the ace of diamonds and made the obvious heart switch. Collecting +500 from Five Diamonds doubled would also not be a great result for North-South.

Awful, so should we drop splinter bid: altogether ? No, the answer is, in fact extremely simple, and leads to my BOLS bridge tip:

Do not play splinter bids; play reversed splinter bids.

After a one Heart Opening :

3♠ =           singleton club

4§ =          singleton diamond 

4♠ =            singleton spade

    After a One Spade opening:

4♣ =          singleton diamond

4♦ =           singleton club

4♥ =          natural

You will lose nothing in the subsequent cue bidding if you play that:

1♥/1♠      4♣ (singleton ♦)

4♦ = cue-bid in ♣!

and

1♥    3♠ (singleton ♣) 

4♣ = cue-bid in ♠

Of course, there is a defence to the reversed splinters: a double still shows the short suit. So, 1♥—Pass—4♣—Double shows a diamond suit, etc.

However, firstly opponents have to make such an agreement, and secondly, doubling has become a bit more dangerous.