Bridge

What would you have bid on those North cards after West’s take-out double? There is not much point in a redouble when you hold four-card support for your partner. North correctly chose 2NT, which over an opponent’s take-out double shows a sound raise to the three level. Had North bid 3S instead, this would have indicated a normal raise to 2S. West cashed the two top hearts and continued with a third round of the suit. Suppose you had been the declarer. How would you have played the spade game from this point? The original declarer won with the heart queen and played ace and another trump. Not good enough! West won the second round of trumps with the king and played a fourth round of hearts. This promoted his partner’s bare jack of trumps and the spade game was defeated. The winning line is to lead a low trump towards dummy at Trick 4. If West rises with the king and plays another heart, you can then overruff East with the ace. This line would go down if West held K-10-x of trumps to East’s J-x. He could then rise with the king and promote a second trump trick. Since West had made a take-out double of 1S, he was much more likely to hold a doubleton spade than East.

Answer

It is too risky to bid 3NT with a singleton heart. The best rebid is 3S, showing that you yave values in spades but not in hearts. You hope that partner has a good heart stopper and can say 3NT, 3S is known as a ‘stopper hid’. It does not guarantee four spades because partner has denied four spades with his 3D response.

AWARDS: 3S-10, 5D-7, 3NT-5, 4D-3, 4NT-2.

David Bird — Knight Features

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