The Splendid Splinter

By Bob Klein

One of the best advances in modern bidding methods is the splinter bid. In most applications, this is a jump bid which shows a singleton or void along with strong support for the suit just bid by partner. Here is a great example of the power of the Splendid Splinter. (For those of you who are baseball fans, I'm sure you know that Ted Williams, one of the greatest players of all time, was known as the Splendid Splinter. I wonder if he was a bridge player!)

You are playing IMPs with your side vulnerable. As dealer, you pick up:

x
Axxxx
Axxxx
Kx

You open this nice 11-count with 1 heart. LHO throws in a bid of 2 spades. Partner now bids 4 diamonds, a splinter bid showing short diamonds, 4-card heart support with game-going values. RHO bids 4 spades. What now?

Partner's splinter bid has made this 11-count very powerful. Try to picture partner's hand. The opponents have bid a lot of spades, so he can't have many points there. He showed short diamonds, so he can't have much in points or length there either. Yet he showed a strong hand. So he must have good hearts along with a club suit that will be a source of tricks and/or a very long heart suit which will produce a nice cross-ruff. Given this information, your singleton spade and club holding suggest that slam is likely if the partnership has all the key cards or else all but one plus the queen of hearts. So you should bid 4 no-trump, roman key card blackwood (RKC) for hearts.

Now the bidding takes an unusual turn. LHO isn't content to let you alone and gums up the works by bidding 5 spades. Now, do you and your partner have the tools to cope with this nasty interference? If you don't, you should. The standard treatment here is DOPI/DEPO with DOPI at the 5-level and DEPO at the 6-level. DOPI is an acronym for Double = 0, Pass = 1. DEPO is an acronym for Double = even, Pass = odd. This really means that double takes the place of 5 clubs, pass takes the place of 5 diamonds, and bids above the interference take the place of 5 hearts and 5 spades. So if you are playing 0314 RKC, double is 0/3, pass is 1/4, the next step is 2 without the queen, and the second next step is 2 with the queen. If you are playing 1430 RKC, the meaning of double and pass are reversed.

A more modern treatment, which I prefer, is to apply DOPI only if the interference is below the 5-level in your trump suit, and DEPO if it is, as here, above it. The reason for this is you do not want to commit the hand to slam by making a response that turns out to show an insufficient number of keycards. DEPO always allows the partnership to defend by doubling instead of declaring. If responder doubles, asker can pass; if responder passes, asker can double. In the current example, suppose you were playing DOPI at the 5-level and DEPO at the 6-level. Responder, holding 2 keycards, must bid 5NT or 6 clubs (without or with the heart queen). If opener has only one key card, you will end up in slam off 2 key cards, which is almost always a disaster. So here the partnership should employ DEPO since the 5 spade interference is above 5 hearts.

In the current example, partner, using DEPO, doubles. Given his previous bid, he must have 2 key cards. Since he can't have much in the pointed suits, he is a heavy favorite to have either the heart queen or a 5-card or longer heart suit, so you should go on and bid 6 hearts. This is the winning action, as the complete hand is:

.......................Ax
......................KQTx
......................x
.....................QJTxxx
KQJTxx......................... xxxx
Jx....................................xx
Qxx.................................KJxx
xx....................................Axx

...................x
..................Axxxx
..................Axxxx
..................Kx

As expected, partner has a strong club suit that produces the necessary tricks for slam even though the partnership has only 23 high-card points!

Note the aggressive tactics by the opponents. When you have favorable vulnerability, it often pays to obstruct as much as possible. In particular, a 5 spade call by RHO could make life miserable for her opponents if they didn't have well-tuned agreements on how to cope with this interference.