Goren Bridge

Multi Two Diamonds, an opening bid of two diamonds to show a weak two-bid in either major, is a very popular convention around the world. The usual defense to it is quite simple — double with a good hand, bid two no-trump with a better hand, and all other bids are natural. The powers that be in North American bridge consider this defense too difficult for their players to master, so they have barred this convention from most forms of competition in North America. What a shame.

West’s ace of spades lead held the first trick and he shifted to the king of diamonds. South won with dummy’s ace, cashed the ace and king of hearts to draw trumps, and led the jack of diamonds. West won with his queen but was endplayed.

A club lead would give away the potential club trick for the defense and a diamond lead would set up dummy’s eight. Either way, declarer could later knock out East’s king of spades and set up a spade for his tenth trick.

West might have done better to shift to a low diamond at trick two rather than the king. Declarer could have prevailed by ducking in dummy, but that would have taken nerves of steel. Should he lose that trick to East, the next two tricks would surely have been the king of spades followed by a spade ruff. Down one before he could even try the club finesse. Would declarer have ducked? We’ll never know.