The Unkindest Cut (27 page)

You have fourteen high card points, but your best suit is four diamonds to the queen. Opening with a four-card minor can be dodgy, and you don’t have enough points to open one no-trump, even though you have a balanced hand with an honor in every suit.

In situations like this, if you are the first to bid (whether as the dealer or because those bidding before you have passed), you can open with a one club bid. This is the minimum bid you can make. It is quite common to use the one club bid as a way of telling your partner that you have opening points, but that you don’t have a suit to bid. You might have a legitimate one club bid, with five or more clubs, but your partner won’t know that unless you have a chance to rebid the clubs.

Your partner has heard the one club bid, there is no intervening bid, and now she must decide how to respond. If she has a particularly weak hand, with five or fewer high card points, theoretically she should pass because she doesn’t really have enough points to bid. That could leave you in a bad situation if you don’t have a legitimate club opener and there is no intervening bid. At this point some players make use of the ‘‘diamond bust’’ bid. In other words, your partner would bid one diamond to indicate that she has a very poor hand with little or no support for you. By bidding one diamond, she at least gives you the opportunity to bid again if you need to (for example, if you have a four-card major that you could bid instead or if you want to try a one no-trump bid).

If your partner has six to ten points and a good diamond suit, she would bid two diamonds to show you that she has more than a ‘‘bust’’ hand. If she has six to ten points and a five-card major suit, she would bid one in that suit. The one club bid is often interpreted by the partner as an invitation to name her best suit. If she is able to name a major suit, and you’re able to support that bid, you can play the contract in a major suit.

The one club opener can be a very useful—and a very frustrating—bid. If you and your fellow bridge players decide to use the one club opener and the diamond bust response, you should discuss it before beginning play to ensure that everyone understands. Otherwise you could end up with some very confused bidding if some people understand what’s going on and others don’t.

Another useful convention in bidding is the use of transfers in response to a one no-trump opener. In chapter 13 Bob and Bart give Emma and Sophie an explanation of this, and you might want to reread this section as a refresher on transfers.

Bidding is a tricky process, and we’ve just touched on some of the basics here. There is much more to learn, and for those who want to know more about the intricacies of bidding and responding, Emma (and I) recommend the following books:

If you would like to know more about Emma Diamond and the Bridge Club series, please check out the Web site
www.bridge-mysteries.com

About the Author

Honor Hartman
is the pseudonym for a mystery author who has lived in Houston, Texas, for more than twenty-five years, has two cats and thousands of books, and plays bridge as often as possible.