National Post

BRIDGE

- By Paul Thurston Feedback always welcome at tweedguy@gmail.com

Some highly energized auctions can often leave the competitor­s scratching their heads to ask themselves: “who’s sacrificin­g against who?”.

During an internatio­nal online match, East’s artificial opening bid showed an intermedia­te hand (10-13 high-card points) with six or more spades, the underlying premise being that having the responder’s hand hidden for any spade contract can be beneficial in both keeping that hand unknown as well as protecting it from the opening lead.

After South’s overcall,

West attempted to place the contract but that plot was foiled when North got into the act, presumably for a possibly profitable sacrifice against the opponents’ spade game.

But West’s hand was too offensivel­y powerful to let matters rest there so that, undaunted by the “five-level belongs to the opponents” philosophy, he took the push to five spades.better to have believed and followed that advice as it turned out!

Back to South for one last kick at the can.

Over six diamonds, a contract that West surely believed was going down, double stopped the music and South was left to play in his “sacrifice”.

Some sacrifice! With North providing a singleton club and an easily establisha­ble heart suit opposite his partner’s great diamond length, heart King and spade void, six diamonds was colder than the polar vortex is currently making southern Ontario!

If you haven’t been there and done that: six diamonds, not vulnerable but doubled and just making, gave North-south the impressive score of +1090!

I truly wish all of my partnershi­p’s “sacrifices” scored so well!

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