Q J 8 4 A K J 9 3 5 3 9 2

West dealer, E-W vul.

The bidding goes:

SOUTH	WEST	NORTH	EAST
Helgemo	Versace	Helness	Lauria
-	pass	pass	1
dbl	3	5	pass
6	all	pass

Partner leads a low heart. You win the ace and you have to consider carefully your return seeing this menacing dummy:

	NORTH 3 2 10 8 7 A K J 9 8 7 6 4
WEST - - - -		EAST Q J 8 4 A K J 9 3 5 3 9 2
	SOUTH - - - -

Scroll down to see what happened at Hammamet

The full deal was:

	NORTH 3 2 10 8 7 A K J 9 8 7 6 4
WEST K 10 7 Q 6 5 2 Q 10 4 7 6 3		EAST Q J 8 4 A K J 9 3 5 3 9 2
	SOUTH A 9 6 5 4 2 A K Q J 10 8 5

This remarkable defence killed dummy's diamonds: Helgemo was able to discard one spade loser on the second diamond, but Lauria ruffed the third round and declarer was left with two spade losers, for two down.

Lauria was able to visualize declarer's hand. Partner more or less has promised four hearts, hence declarer was singleton in hearts. Doubling and then bidding 6 meant that he held a very strong and long club suit, but even off-shape doubles over 1 tend to have four spades, hence South rated to have 4-1-1-7 shape. In any case, if South only had three spades and two diamonds there would be no defence.

At the other table, North opened 3 (a transfer preempt!) and South bounced to 5. The same defence would have beaten the club game, but it was not found, so Italy gained 11 IMPs. Alas, it was too little too late. They lost by 12.

By the way, do you approve of South's take-out double over 1? With that distribution it is very unlikely that a simple overcall of 2 would have ended the bidding -and, even if there was a 4-4 fit in spades, the hands like South's tend to play a lot better in the long suit, all the more since South's spades were anemic.

Special thanks to Yvan Calame for the HTML convertion!

Nikos Sarantakos,
Luxembourg, June 1998

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