BRIDGE

From the Canadian Senior Teams Championship, here’s another one of those following-suit situations partner can use to transmit a suit-preference message to direct the defense.

Despite East-West being able to make three notrump (via an eventual heart endplay on North), it was common for East-West to subside after South’s brash three-level intervention. After all if, as seemed likely from East’s perspective, there was no decent game on for his side, maybe a plus score could be garnered on defense.

West cashed his top spades and looked around for new worlds to conquer. Unfortunately for many partnerships, West decided one of those worlds might contain an immediate heart ruff for his partner.

But the heart shift at trick-two didn’t fare at all well as South won dummy’s Queen for one diamond discard and continued with the ace to impale East painfully on the horns of a dilemma: He could trump the second heart to lose his trump trick or discard to lose a diamond trick. In either case, the eventual fall of the spade nine meant that ill-advised heart shift had harpooned the defense.

At one table defending three clubs. West took note of the fact that East had followed suit to the first spade with the five (lowest card to show an odd number of cards, almost certainly three since East hadn’t responded one spade) and to the second round with the six, a low spade in context.

If East had the requisite void to ruff the first heart, his duty would have been to play his highest available spade on the second round. No high spade indicated West should find the diamond shift — he did! Feedback always welcome at tweedguy@gmail.com