Support Doubles and Suit Preferences
By Mike Lawrence

This hand offers an excellent result to East-West, but they have to walk through a minefield in the bidding and play. There are many opportunities to miss the maximum result.

There are a number of areas where good players consistently achieve maximum results. One undefinable skill is the ability to time the play or defense. A second is proper use of suit preferences.

This signal is an important part of winning defense but it suffers greatly from being misused or even abused. Far too many defenses go down the drain in the name of suit preference.

In this hand, West opened one heart, East responded one spade, and South came in with a two club overcall. Many light overcalls get away unscathed, but not this one.

What would you bid over South's two clubs? If you use Support Doubles, you have to pass, but if you are not using them, would you take a chance and double two clubs or would you pass?

West doubled and led his singleton spade. East won and avoided the obvious but incorrect play of leading the king of hearts.

Appreciating that his hearts could be used for entries, East returned the ten of spades. West ruffed and noted that the ten of spades was an emphatically high card. It clearly showed a heart entry. West knew East didn't have a singleton heart because East would have returned it instead of the spade. West led the six of hearts to East's queen. East returned the eight of spades this time for West to ruff. West led a heart to East's king and got a third ruff.

West took his ace of clubs, got out with the ace of hearts, and scored a later diamond trick for down five hundred. An unspectacular but exact defense that would have lost a trick had East-West mis-timed the defense.

Cashing the king of hearts too soon would cost one trick, cashing both heart honors would cost two tricks, and if West led the ace of hearts too soon, that would cost a trick.

EXTRA BIDDING PROBLEM

Here is the East hand.

A 10 8 7
K Q
8 7 5 3 2
9 3

In the discussion, I mentioned Support Doubles. If you are using Support Doubles, what would you bid as East if the bidding went a little differently?

West 1H Pass

North Pass Pass

East 1S ?

South 2C

East should double. If using Support Doubles, East is saying that he has a hand that wants to defend if West wanted to double two clubs for penalty. This is not at all a penalty double. It just says you have a useful hand and wish your partner to do something intelligent.

If you are NOT using Support Doubles, East has a different problem entirely. In that case, the bid I would suggest with the East hand is two hearts. You don't want to give up on getting a partscore. Your other choice, two diamonds, would create a forcing auction that you might not be able to stop in time.