The Frenchmen were busy winning awards

PEARLS BEFORE SWINE® GARFIELD® BIG NATE® ARLO & JANIS® ZITS®

In yesterday’s column, I gave what was considered the best defense of the year by the International Bridge Press Association jury. The winners were Jean-christophe Quantin and Cedric Lorenzini from France. They also won the Yeh Bros. award for the best-bid deal of the year -- see the diagram.

This layout arose during a Roundof-32 match in the 2017 Vanderbilt Knockout Teams in Kansas City, Missouri. It might never have seen the light of day, except that it was written up by Quantin and sent to Brent Manley, who was an editor of the daily bulletins. He passed it on to John Carruthers, the editor of the IBPA’S monthly bulletin. The East-west cards were not given, so I have guessed.

At the other table, North-south stopped in four spades. In this auction, Quantin’s two-club cue-bid announced spade support with at least game-invitational values. Three clubs instigated a game-force and asked for a club stopper for three no-trump. Three diamonds was natural, three hearts indicated values in that suit, and the next three calls were control-bids. Four no-trump was Roman Key Card Blackwood, the reply by partnership agreement showing two key cards (one ace and the spade king, or two aces) and a useful void. Lorenzini, realizing that they had no wasted values, jumped to seven spades. Excellent!

Declarer established dummy’s diamond suit and took these 13 tricks: five spades, two hearts, five diamonds and one club ruff in the dummy.