ACES ON BRIDGE
In competion for the McConnell trophy in Montreal, the Netherlands women’s team sneaked past their quarterfinal opponents, thanks to this deal.
While the Dutch North-South pair had taken 10 tricks in three no-trump in the other room, Nicola Smith and Heather Dhondy for England bid to an excellent spot. On any lead but a low club, the contract is makeable, but only by setting up the spades at once before drawing two rounds of trumps. It looks to me as if, on a spade lead, that is a not totally unreasonable line to follow. Instead, Dhondy quite logically played the club king and another club. When East discarded (ruffing in and playing a spade would have set the hand by force), declarer won and drew two rounds of trumps, ending in dummy. Now she advanced the spade queen, which was covered, ruffed and overruffed. Again, the defenders could have done better on this trick than they did.
But now Bep Vriend as West carefully exited with the club jack, which was ruffed in dummy, and Dhondy trumped a spade back to hand to lead a low heart. Vriend saw her chance and put in the queen! Had she played low, declarer would have finessed the jack to get the extra entry to dummy to ruff out and enjoy the spades. As it was, declarer was now an entry short to set up the spades, and had to concede a black-suit loser at the end. That meant down one and 12 IMPs to the Dutch, a 24 IMP turnover on the board in a match England lost by 20 IMPs.
ANSWER: Clearly, you should not pass here. You could sensibly bid either two diamonds, planning to give up over a spade rebid from your partner, or you could respond one no-trump. The latter seems to get you to a 5-4 minor fit whenever one is available, since it lets partner bid his second suit more easily, so I would opt for that.