BRIDGE

You don’t always need a stack of potential trump tricks to inflict serious damage on an opponent’s doubled contract: lots of side-suit high cards and timely depletion of declarer’s and/or dummy’s supply of trumps will often do the job.

After the preemptive jump overcall and competitive raises by West and North, East was in a tough spot. He did have significant extra values but five diamonds seemed a long way off (it would have been made). Instead of heading ever higher, East issued a competitive double to say “Extra points over here, please do something intelligent”.

And looking at a totally balanced hand of his own to go with some potential defensive tricks in spades, West did two intelligent things: he passed to seek a penalty and he led a trump.

Trump leads when your side owns a majority of the deck’s high cards and are often a practical choice to protect those high cards from being trumped, especially in the dummy.

And so it proved as south won the trump to play a spade. But West won that to fire back another club and repeated that process when South tried the effect of a second round of spades.

That left South in possession of six club tricks and no more for -800 on the score sheet and a huge advance on the game bonus Eastwest might have earned had they carried on to their own game.

Not only does catching the opponents for such a number look like a good score but it may dissuade them from future escapades of interference. Pity!