Dubious Logic

Conventions: Old and New

Recently – well three or four years ago – when bridge was being contemplated as an Olympic sport, it was envisaged that it would take a place in the Winter Olympic schedule. Had full acceptance been gained (it wasn't but that's another story), the Olympic charter would have needed altering to allow sports that didn't involve snow and ice being part of the Winter Games. That bridge players are averse to any showing of the white stuff was very apparent at the Suffolk Championship Pairs semi-final recently, coming as it did, in the middle of the recent cold snap.

Numbers were down even though pairs had won through from their club heats. Accordingly qualification for the final became a matter of avoiding disaster rather than over-pressing to beat the cut. That may explain the less than adventurous approach here, where only a small minority bid the excellent grand slam:

Was not an uncommon auction – where did it go wrong? Well, if you play strong jump shifts then surely the North hand is a candidate for one. However, after that you'd better have the old Acol agreement that responder's next bid in another suit, is a control agreeing opener's first bid suit. This means that the types of hand on which you can make a jump shift are limited to:

1. Strong single suited – repeat suit at next turn.
2. Strong support for opener first suit – support or bid a new suit (control) next.
3. Lots of high cards with a dominant suit – bid no-trumps at second turn

So I imagine a sequence like:

After four clubs gets a control bid of diamonds in return, North is well placed but not to use Blackwood as that won't locate the aces. The answer is Josephine or the Grand Slam Force – a bid of five no-trump that asks partner to call seven holding two of the top three trump honours. Though invented by Ely Culbertson back in the 1930s, it was popularised by his wife Josephine. There was still room for some modern gadgets:

Here North's 5♣ was an exclusion key-card ask. Over East's double, South's pass showed zero or three key cards (aces and the trump king) outside of clubs. Catering for --- of these North bid five spades, South did in fact have three but nothing else to show so advanced to slam and that was the good news North had been waiting for.

Published Saturday 12.Mar.2005