BRIDGE
The light opening bid has much to be said in its favour, but there are times when it boomerangs and produces endless grief.
Consider this deal from a team-of-four match where, at the first table, South wound up in five clubs after East opened the bidding with one heart. North’s two-notrump bid was the unusual notrump, promising at least five diamonds and five clubs.
West led the king and another heart to East’s ace, and East continued with the queen of hearts, ruffed in dummy as West discarded a spade. Declarer thus learned that East had started with a six-card suit, and this knowledge had a great bearing on how to play the trumps to try to avoid a trump loser. Since there was no way to make five clubs if East had the guarded king of trumps, declarer had to assume West had that card. South therefore led a diamond to his king and returned the jack of clubs rather than the two, which would be the more normal play. West covered the jack with the king, taken by the ace. The only question now remaining was whether East had started with a singleton club, and declarer quite reasonably decided that East, who had thus far shown up with only six high-card points, probably would not have opened the bidding on such skimpy values without that feature. So South ruffed a diamond, led a club and finessed the nine to bring in his game. At the second table, where the declarer at the same contract did not have the benefit of a one-heart opening bid by East, he played the clubs more normally and wound up down one.