What do you bid with a solid 9 card suit and little else?  South had that decision to make on board 11. Perhaps it depends on your system. It is not the type of hand that is suitable to open with an Acol  2C or Benjamin 2D. If you have either Acol 2S or a Benjamin 2C in your arsenal that is a possible choice, although I believe that it does not need the EBU regulations for a strong artificial opening bid like 2C to show an Acol 2 in any suit.

So you are left with an opening 4S for which you are at least one trick too strong and a slam might be missed, or start with 1S and keep bidding spades and hope partner gets the message. Our South chose a 4S opener. West and North pass and I had a decision to make with the East hand.

It is possible to make a case for passing, but the spade void argues for bidding but which bid is best? The obvious choice is 5D on the 6 card suit. However this is very committal - imagine partner with several good spades and few diamonds or long hearts and short diamonds. The bid that leaves most options open is double which we play as mainly for takeout. A spade void and limited high cards is a bit scary but it was my choice.

South passed and Georgia had a reasonably simple decision to make and bid her 6 card suit. Without a long suit she would pass and with a choice of possible trump suits she would bid 4NT for takeout.  North with 2 possible trump tricks and side king might have doubled but chose not to do so. Knowing that partner had a long suit, I passed 5C despite having only 3 small trumps and a good 6 card diamond suit and we had reached the only game that might make.

Now South was in the hot seat. When you open with a pre-empt you are supposed to pass thereafter but this hand is too strong for a 4S opener so South continued to 5S breaking discipline. Georgia doubled to finish the auction.There was little to the play. A diamond was led to the ace and then a ruff with 2 aces to come meant a penalty of 300 which gave us a joint top.

Had we been left in 5C the play is interesting. Declarer needs to ruff two spades in dummy and discard the last spade on the hearts whilst making sure that South does not ruff a heart. So ruff the spade, a club to the ace, ruff a spade and run the hearts discarding the last spade while North has to follow suit. North has his two trump tricks but that is all. A club to the queen at trick two also works as North cannot return a trump without losing his second trump trick.