HE NEEDED COURAGE AND PARTNER’S HELP

Today’s deal was played in a one-day prepandemic team event in Sydney. It was the decisive deal from the last round between the two teams vying for first place. It contained instructive points at both tables.

Bridge is a bidder’s game. The more you compete, the more pressure you put on your opponents, and the more mistakes they will make. True, occasionally you will suffer a penalty, but the good results will outweigh the bad.

In the given auction, North’s aggressive negative double showed at least four spades. Needing little more than four spades to the king-queen in his partner’s hand, South leapt to four spades.

West led the club ace, then switched to the heart two, which even the parking attendant knew was a singleton. Now East gave a suit-preference signal to help West. He played the heart nine under dummy’s 10, trying to indicate an entry in diamonds. Declarer continued with the ace and another spade. West won with the king while East discarded the encouraging diamond nine. But West lost his nerve: He cashed the diamond ace, whereupon declarer claimed. If West had underled his diamond ace, East would have won the trick and given his partner a heart ruff to defeat the contract.

At the other table, North cautiously passed over two clubs. Then East, who liked his singleton and four-card trump support, raised to three clubs. West went on to game. As you can see, five clubs was easy to make with the aid of the winning diamond finesse. One team scored plus 420 and plus 600, the swing that won the tournament.