Cui Culpa?

10th Jan – Board 17: Love All. Dealer North. 

I find it really hard to determine who is to blame for the E/W pair reaching totally the wrong contract on the featured hand. But I’m quite sure I would have done too.

What would you respond to 1♦ on that West hand? There are a number of possibilities I suppose, with 2♣, 3♦ or even a splinter of 3♠ all having their good points. I imagine whichever of those was taken East would end up – sooner or later – in 3NT which stands no chance on a spade lead but is laydown on any other. Yet at one table West responded 5♦, paying due homage to the Losing Trick Count, and thereby hitting the correct contract in one go. The trouble of course with the LTC is that at high levels it tends to become wobbly, treating aces and kings as the same, and for that reason it is often eschewed on hands such as West. In 5♦ declarer should aim to set up the clubs and make five club tricks, five diamond tricks and ultimately a ruff in the closed hand.