No Problem

11th August – Board 2: North/South Game. Dealer East.

Some hands are difficult and some aren’t and the featured hand should belong firmly to the latter camp. Amazingly all sorts of things happened at the table leading to a variety of – er – interesting results. This is most definitely what should happen:

West	North	East	South
		1D	1S
4H	Dbl	End

Given that East opens the bidding South has an easy spade overcall and West surely has the right cards to preempt with 4H. (Even after two passes I would open that hand 4H, given the prevailing vulnerability.) North would surely be affronted and double and this contract would fail by one trick assuming West ultimately takes a double diamond finesse. (It works wonders!) That might not seems the best score in the world until you realise that N/S are cold for 3NT, so any further bidding by them after 4H would end in failure.