Opening lead: four of diamonds.

Everyone is occasionally guilty of becoming enamoured of a particular hand and overestimating its value.

All players should, of course, strive to keep such excesses to a minimum, as steady overbidding is a serious fault in anyone’s game. The best policy in bridge is to try to bid your hands as accurately as possible – neither overbidding nor underbidding them but this is not always easy to do.

Consider this deal from the ItalyU.S. match in 1951. Howard Schenken was South for the American team and, at favourable vulnerability, decided to open one club.

He found his partner with a huge hand, and North never did stop bidding until a small slam was reached. Schenken did everything he could to slow his partner down, but North had the bit firmly in his teeth and refused to let go.

The Americans were exceptionally lucky on the deal because, as the cards were divided, the slam could not be stopped. West led a diamond. Schenken won the trick with dummy’s queen, finessed the jack of clubs, led a heart to the queen and cashed the A-K of trump. When he next led another heart, West took the ace, and that was that. Declarer had 12 ice-cold tricks.

Schenken would have gone down had West held the queen of clubs or had East held the Q-10-x-x of trump, or had East held the ace of hearts, or if West had led a spade initially and East had the king.

North was extremely pleased by the favourable outcome, which was attributable for the most part to his optimistic series of bids. But he knew he had dodged a bullet, and no doubt vowed not to press his luck quite as much in the future.