Support doubles bridge convention

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This is an offensive convention designed to tell your partner in a cheap way (without going too high) that you have some support in his or her trump suit, namely three of them. Here’s how it goes:

Let’s say you’re the Dealer as South and you open a Diamond with a pretty minimum opening. Your West left-hand opponent passes and your partner now bids a Heart in response to your opening bid. Now the East right-hand opponent comes to life and bids One Spade, indicating he has five Spades (he would have used a negative double if he had four Spades). You can now double that One Spade bid by the opponent to show that you have three Hearts to support your partner’s trump suit. If you have four Hearts, you should bid 2 Hearts. The support double is an excellent way to distinguish between three- or four-card  support for your partner’s trump suit.

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