Splinter bids

[jack]

A brief explanation of splinter bids. First, the problem to which they are the answer.

If we agree a good trump fit in the first or second bid, and someone knows we have more than enough strength for game, can they indicate the potential for slam?

Eg. If I have five losers and you have seven, and I open 1S, and you have a fit, I would hope you jump to game. We have a fit, we have 14 losers, no more communication can help. Then, because I'm stronger, I could call Blackwood or whatever.

However, if you open 1S, then I know we have a fit, and maybe more. But if I bid 4S you will pass, and if I bid 2S or 3S, you will pass (as they mean I have nine or eight losers, and would ask you to bid game if you were better than 7). How can I say "Game in spades. But investigate slam."

If you (as I until recently) had not experienced this problem a lot, and cannot reliably bid to a makable game, this is a solution to a problem you don't have. Ignore it. Be satisfied to find the game, and let the slam be down to luck. Don't try to cram too much into your head at once, or you'll forget the stuff useful for 80% of the time in favour of that useful much less often.

Of course, it's still useful to be aware of it.

For the details of when to do so and what it means, see a wiki page, I don't reliably know it. But the basic idea is, A double-jump to the four level in a new suit says "Game in what you said, but also I have a singleton or void in this suit."

Partner can then see if his hand looks better or worse knowing you have first or second round control in that suit. If he has A-x-x-x (or x-x-x-x) then it's rosy -- those x's can probably be ruffed immediately. And if the ace isn't there, that's only one loser which was already counted. If he has K-Q-x or worse, it's not so useful -- the honours aren't very useful, and represent the loser count is probably optimistic.

Partner can then either cue-bid (eg. splinter 4c, response 4d saying "And I have Ace/void in dimonds", is looking good), bid blackwood, or sign-off in game of the original suit. Of course, then the splinter-bidder can *then* take control of the auction and bid blackwood if he so chooses, though of course he could have done so immediately instead of splintering if he'd wanted to, and is ignoring his partner's qualms.

Note, please look up when this is appropriate. I would say something like "a new suit either jumped to the four level, or double-jumped," is probably a splinter since it can't mean anything else. However, I wouldn't know if there were interference, or an argument about suit first. Check the convention sheet.

Comments

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

Hee hee. I know nothing, really NOTHING, about bridge, but curiously I always do read the bridge column in the Saturday paper (and your posts on the subject) just because it's so, so funny to read sentences where the words all mean perfectly normal things to me.

If I have five losers and you have seven, and I open 1S, and you have a fit, I would hope you jump to game.

If you have a fit, I'll tell you to calm down, mate!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

so funny to read sentences where the words all mean perfectly normal things to me.

Oh, I agree completely. I think many un-gettable jokes are funny for just this reason :)

Maybe I should start a series on explanation of bridge for the completely ignorant. (Like the "guide to something for dummies"s, but ignorant is more accurate but less reassuring :)) That could actually be interesting. I could include little made up anecdotes and smiley faces :)

I hadn't thought I'd made *many* bridge posts, though...? (And, as a matter of fact, most are probably completely incomprehensible except to people who played the same system and played the same game :))

I hadn't thought I'd made *many* bridge posts, though...?

[mair_in_grenderich]

I see six.

Re: I hadn't thought I'd made *many* bridge posts, though...?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

LOL. Cool, tags really work. Of course, they work for *bridge* because it has an obvious short tag name. I wouldn't have been able to tell you if I'd ever used it before, but apparently I did remember to tag most/all posts that mention bridge, bridge. And it was useful!

OTOH, I think half of them were "Blah blah pizza blah and I played bridge last night and it was fun and I did surprisingly well despite blah and musings about philosophy blah and after that people blah" as opposed to things about the mechanics, and should be as accessible to anyone else as most of my posts ever are :)

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

"Dummies for Dummies"? :-p

My honest impression of bridge is that it's four people sitting round a table, each trying to convey to the person opposite maximum information about the cards they are holding without the people on either side being able to work the same information out for themselves. This therefore seems to reduce to a simple question of "how many hashes can you remember?"

I am being slightly facetious as I assume there *must* be something more to it than that, but really, it certainly can seem that way!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

"Dummies for Dummies"? :-p

ROFL! That's perfect. Indeed, I may steal it. Though you've no doubt picked up enough to know that the skills of dummy are encompassed by:

* Sitting still and not saying anything
* Not criticising partner afterwards

:)

I am being slightly facetious as I assume there *must* be something more to it than that, but really, it certainly can seem that way!

No, that's pretty much it. Except you don't make it sound skilful or fun :) OK, the differences are:

0. Bidding a number of tricks is *half* the skill. The other half is in playing the hand the same way as whist and actually making that many, though they are intertwined because you have to know your chances of making tricks and what they will score to know what you should bid.

1. Most of the time, the opponents *do* know what the bids mean.

Hiding information is generally a nice side-effect or occasional bonus, rather than normal. Finding a contract is normally a much higher priority than hiding information, though you do so when you can.

Indeed, conventions which encrypt deliberately, eg. "the partnership know they have the aces between them, they can swap the next bid by if the bidder has the SA or not, and they know and the opponents don't what it means." are AFAIK extremely illegal at many competitions, simply because it's too complicated and no fun for everyone else :)

2. Your information has to be successively revealed (like a partially downloaded interlaced GIF :)).

Your first bid has to say if it's worth going farther or not, there's no point having a more accurate description if it means you've committed yourself to trying to make more tricks than you can.

3. Because of this, most bids are at least somewhat natural, ie. claiming a number of tricks in trump suit you actually think you can make. Otherwise you get stuck again.

4. Most people rely more on skill accumulated by thinking and experience to judge how good a hand is, rather than a predefined metric. Which is more fun.

It would in fact be interesting to try to determine a mathematically optimum metric. I've no idea if it would be possible or good. Optimum defense play is really difficult to codify because there's so many little things, but declarer play has more knowledge available, so you should be able to decant experience of what combinations of hands are good into an expert system to some extent.

5. Most people like tinkering with systems built by rules of thumb and experience-acquired skill in efforts of improving them a bit. So enjoy this.

[xraycb.livejournal.com]

I disagree that the 4D cue bid makes the player who splintered the captain. The splinter is supposed to define that players hand clearly - and hand over captaincy. After the splinter 4S is a sign off and A cue bid is then a slam try, and the normal development from there is probably 4S ("nothing more to say"), or a further cue bid/blackwood ("looks promising, let's check we've got the important cards").

This is all style stuff but this is why I've started to avoid adopting conventions purely on the strength of the brief descriptions on bridgeguys.com and similar. :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Sorry. I haven't actually *played* this, I don't know how it normally does or should turn out, just appreciated, and wanted to explain, the utility of it.

Looking back, it does look like I meant that, I'm not sure if I did or not :) I don't know which hand it makes sense to be the captain. I would have thought the stronger one, there than being less information to convey, but I don't have any experience with that :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

With some more experience, I happened to read this post again, and decided what I *did* mean :) What I said was wrong: if you open 1S and I see we have strength for slam, I can jump straight to slam-try (blackwood or cue bids in the technology I had available then, though since I've learnt about conventions at lower levels we could agree to use), the important thing being that it gives me a way to start cue bidding if I have a void, without waiting for us to bid agree a suit game first.

But if you open 1S and I'm a bit stronger than minimum for game, this is one way to say "I'm interested in slam if you are, partner", especially if I have a void which may improve your hand.

Of course, this advice is all a bit out of date, and not as clever as I thought it was at the time, but I think it was in the right general direction :)