BRIDGE

Time to revisit an “old friend” and see how it affected the result on this deal from an online tournament.

Do you always “Cover an honour with an honour”? You shouldn’t!

Add to that time-honoured prescription for good defensive play: if and only if you can see the potential for promoting a secondary trick for you or your partner.

At the table, East’s opening bid was a “Multi”: a weak two-bid in an unspecified major to make West’s response a “pass or correct” effort: “partner, please pass if your major is hearts, correct to two spades if that is your suit”.

After the heart-showing pass by East, South entered the fray with a practical decision to compete for a partscore. A doomed effort apparently As South seems destined to lose one spade, two hearts, one diamond and two clubs. Maybe!

Top of the club sequence lead ducked for West to win the King and make the passive shift to a trump. (Yes, a low spade looks more promising.).

South won and continued with two more rounds of diamonds.

West fired back a second round of clubs that South won in dummy to advance the Jack of spades. Cover an honour with an honour by East?

It’s not clear what East was hoping to promote for his side by covering the Jack but, woodenly, that’s exactly what he did and the defence collapsed.

South won the spade ace and played a second round towards dummy to establish enough winners for the very necessary discards of heart losers from the closed hand.

Addendum #2: only cover the second of equal honours! East missed that lesson!

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