After the auction starts 1C-P-1D, what should south do? I personally like 3H. 4H may be unnecessarily high and doubling to keep spades alive could be awkward later on and does nothing to preempt the opponents minor suit auction.
Lynn Berg in the common game analysis suggests that the auction should end in 3H. I don’t agree. East has an opening hand opposite an opening hand and has to do something. 4C is a possible call as is double. Either one could work or fail but passing 3H can’t be good. It turns out either action will get to 4C.
What about NS, should south bid over 4C? Maybe. The vulnerability is right. Despite the tactical preempt, south has a pretty good hand and a double might work. If partner recognizes it as takeout he can surmise that partner has 4 spades and longer hearts (6+) and a decent hand.
In the play against 4C, north leads the singleton Q of hearts. South wants north to switch to a diamond, so how does he tell partner? Play the 2 of hearts. Using standard carding, this tells partner you don’t like the suit or as in this case you want partner to switch suits. South obviously has the AK for the Q to have held and if south wanted to continue hearts he could have simply overtaken the Q in case it was a singleton.
North realizes that if partner has a trump or spade trick, its not going anywhere so south must want a diamond. He can see 10 of them and partner has shown a long suit which is often accompanied by a short one. Hopefully a void in this case. North leads a diamond.
South ruffs and cashes the A of hearts, holding east to 10 tricks.
BUT WAIT
North trumped south’s Ace…
And led another diamond for south to ruff!
4C down 1. NS +100 in the common games got 58% of the matchpoints.
Shame on all the south’s who overtook the Q. Trust your partner.
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