8th March – Board 10: Game All. Dealer East.
The single jump response in a new suit is the forgotten bid of bridge and although it happens rarely it can be worth its weight in gold. Those who eschew it can find that bidding problems might occur later which are almost impossible to overcome.
 |
West
|
North
|
East
|
South
|
No
|
1S
| ||
No
|
3H
|
No
|
3S
|
No
|
4H
|
No
|
4NT
|
No
|
5S
|
No
|
6C
|
No
|
6H
|
End
|
Just imagine for a moment that you only bid 2H at your first go as North and partner rebids 2S. What now? 3H is non-forcing and 4H hardly does the hand justice and there is no semblance of another bid. Much better to make a jump shift in the first place showing a hand with a very good five-card suit or better and normally about sixteen points or more. (Here you can afford to shade those values because of the quality of the suit.) A rebid in the suit more or less dictates that that suit will be trumps so South has an easy way forward via RKCB. 6C of course is a grand slam try and only now should North back-pedal. As it happens the slam should be easy to bid even after a 2H response because opener will now reverse with 3C, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it is best to show one’s hand in one go if possible rather than by a series of convoluted manoeuvres.
When declarer discovers that there is a trump loser he will be forced to take a club finesse in order to pitch the losing spade. For the mathematically minded this equates to 68% + ½ of 32% - or 84%, well within the odds for a small slam.
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