Goren Bridge

Today’s deal is from a topflight team competition earlier this year. North’s decision to enter the auction would not meet with everyone’s approval, but it was a reasonable action. Look what it did, however, to East-West. There was no longer a realistic route to the cold four hearts.

East-West were two of the world’s best players, but they had no experience as a partnership. Did East’s three-spade cuebid show a stopper or ask for a stopper? Or maybe West decided that a player of his reputation only needed a doubleton queen for a stopper.

In any event, East-West ended up in three no-trump, off the first five tricks assuming a high spade lead. Ended up, that is, until South decided to “sacrifice” and gave partner a choice between diamonds and spades. Strangely, North chose diamonds, but it didn’t matter much. Four diamonds doubled was down one, while four spades by North would have been down at least that much as long as the defense forced dummy to ruff before declarer could get to his hand and lead a diamond.

The confusion, surprisingly, spread to the other table, where North did not enter the auction and East-West arrived in four hearts. North shifted to his singleton diamond after cashing his two top spades. West, with 10 top tricks and playing in a team game, made the embarrassing error of taking the diamond finesse, suffering a diamond ruff for down one. You’ve got to love it when experts do these things!