1. What does the ♣2 mean?
   If it shows count – Partner has an odd number of Clubs (low-high shows odd). If it shows attitude – Partner doesn’t want you to continue Club (low card discourages this suit). Unless… it is a singleton.


2. What card do you continue with?
   ♦A. Partner must be short in Diamond for not correcting the bid.


3. Say you chose the ♦A now and partner followed with the ♦2. What does the ♦2 mean?
   If it shows count – Partner has odd number of Diamonds. If it shows attitude – Partner doesn’t want you to continue Diamonds. Unless… it is a singleton.


4. What is partner’s holding in the minors?
   3 Clubs and 1 Diamond! With 3-3 in both minors he would correct the bid to 3♦. As he passed your 3♣ bid – he MUST be longer in Clubs! Also, if he had xx in Club or Diamond – He would play high – low.


5. How do you continue?
   The ♦10! Planning to let partner ruff a Diamond, you want him to return Heart. So, a high Diamond now asks him for a higher ranked suit (which is Heart here). Leading a low Diamond would have asked for the lower suit (Club). Note that it seems natural for partner to return a Club, as you led and bid Clubs. But the ♦10 asks specifically for a Heart return. So… the ♦10 at trick 3 ruffed by partner, a Heart return from him, ruffed by you, a Diamond ruff and another Heart ruff to complete 6 tricks for defense. If, at trick 3, you continue with a low Diamond, partner will ruff and play back a Club. Declarer will ruff, pull trumps and make 9 (or 10) tricks: 2 Diamonds, 2 Hearts (Can make 3 Hearts by playing Heart twice to the 10) and 5 Spades. If, at trick 2, you play another top Club, declarer will ruff, pull trumps and make at least 9 (or 10) tricks.

Things to remember

a. You can agree to play a variety of artificial 2 suiter bids over opponent’s opening (Like Michaels cue bid, Ghestem, unusual 2NT or any other convention). You need to also agree on the range of these bids. Some play unlimited range for such a bid. Others plays it to be weak. And others plays it to be either weak (up to 10 points) OR very strong (16+) . And then with 11-15 points they bid the higher suit first and later the second suit, as in this hand’s bidding. Needs agreement!

b. Suggestion for partnership: When you lead an Ace (or a Q) – you ask partner for an attitude signal (high = I like this, low = I don’t like this, when playing standard carding). When you lead a King – you ask for count (high-low = even number of cards, low-high = odd, when playing standard carding).

c. Suit preference can be given in several ways: On the first discard (can play Lavinthal, which means a low card asks for the lower suit, a high card asks for the higher suit OR you can play odd/even, which means that an odd card encourages, and an even card is suit preference same as for Lavinthal). When partner leads the Ace and the suit is dead (meaning it’s useless to signal attitude or count, as we have no more tricks in that suit) – then we signal suit preference. And also, like in this hand, when we give partner a ruff: We can signal to him which suit to play back to our hand, to give him another ruff. In this hand a High Diamond asked for Heart , and a low Diamond would have asked for Club (As partner doesn’t have Diamonds and Spade is the trump, there are only 2 suits remaining for him to play: Club or Heart).

d. When you bid 2 suits, and partner passes the 2nd suit – it means that he is for sure longer in that suit, and most likely very short in your first suit. If partner has same length (or longer in your first suit), he is obliged to correct the bid back to your first suit, even if he has 0 points! So here, in this hand, partner freely passed your 3♣ bid, which means he prefers Clubs over Diamonds (with a singleton Club he would have bid 3♦ even with 0 points).