Thursday, February 02, 2006 6:41 AM

Splinters In Competition II

PITBULLS:

I dislike splinters in competition. The fact that the opponents are in your auction gives you an immediate Q bid in their suit to show “limit raise or better”. Therefore you do not need splinters. Playing Italian style Q bids you can bid your stiff as a control later in the auction. I feel a splinter is a redundant waste of a bid. Garozzo has it right when he says that “Bridge is a game of suits” . Getting your suit in early is far better than announcing any singletons.

I was playing with Mavis who plays splinters in competition. She holds void Kx KJ109xxx xxxx and I open 1♠. There is a 2♣ overcall so she can not bid a 2/1 with only 7 HCP and a void in my major suit . Furthermore she can not bid 3♦ as that is a splinter in support of spades. She passes and my RHO bids 2♥ and I pass and LHO bids 3♣. Mavis now backs in 3♦ and they bid 3♥. I have no idea what kind of hand partner has but I do know that my hand is great in support of diamonds so I choose a 4♣ Q bid . AJxxx Axx Axxx x . This gets doubled so I bid 4♦ . Mavis thinks this is a nice place to play the hand so she passes and 6♦ is lay down.

This was a horribly confused auction where I did not have a clue what partners hand entailed . What a difference if she bid 3♦ after the 2♣ overcall saying she had a 3♦ pre-empt !! This immediately describes her hand in one bid and puts me into the auction. I can even make a slam try. I do not know how the auction went at the Gandolfo table but I do know they got a better result then we did ( Tom was doubled in 5♦ for an overtrick ).

Playing natural weak jump shifts in competition has the nice side effect as refining your 2/1 in competition . Partner knows that when you do bid a 2/1 , these pre-emptive hand types are taken out of the equation. KQxx Kxxx x Axxx and I open 1♠ and they overcall 2♣ . You bid 3♣ so with my hand AJxxx Axx Axxx x I bid 3♦ and you bid 3♥. I bid 4♣ and you bid 4♦ as a control. Say , you got your splinter in anyway under game without splintering . I bid Blackwood and we get to our 6♠. We do not need a splinter playing Italian style Q bids !! Just on mathematical probabilities a long suit with pre-emptive values occur more often than splinters. You can get to nice sacrifices or nice contracts. A pass with these type of hands , runs the risk of being jammed. Say with the hand that Mavis had they jam to 5♣. This could be a double game swing as we have no idea that we have 11 diamonds between us !!