I do not see that there was an outstanding hand this week, so we will look at board 14 which is an interesting bidding battle, with some important points in play and defence.

Both East and South pass, and West opens 1H.  North’s bid depends on system; it is an excellent intermediate jump overcall of 2S, but most play weak jumps,  so 1S is our bid.

At our table, East raised to 2H. The hand is very maximum for the bid despite the lack of aces and kings. In the modern style, a jump raise is more an attempt to win the contract than to invite game, so I would have bid 3H on this hand.  The truly invitational hand should  cuebid the opponents suit to show at least game invitational values.

South now wants to bid, but does not have primary spade support of 3 or more cards. The answer is again a modern development,  the responsive double,  which shows tolerance for partners’ suit and support  for  the unbid suits, a perfect description.

At our table, West passed when she might have pre-empted with 3H, and I somewhat cowardly chose 2S when I might have tried 3S, although game looked unlikely opposite a passed hand without a true spade fit.

East rebid 3H, and Georgia raised me to 3S, a weaker bid than doubling again. West continued to 4H leaving me to make a decision. It seemed clear that the hand belongs to North/South but is it a game? It seemed to me that it was unlikely that we can make 4 spades opposite a passed hand so I doubled 4 hearts and everyone passed.

The obvious lead is the SA and the carding and the bidding show that declarer started with 3 spades and partner with a doubleton. Now how to defend? It seems probable that partner has at least one honour in diamonds and probably the CK. So we could play CA and another, hoping to get a ruff for 2 down.  But we know that declarer has 6 hearts and 3 spades so is unlikely to hold 3 clubs.  If we play CA and a club we might set up the suit and allow the contract to be made.

So I decided to try for any diamond tricks that we might have,  on a good day partner could have AK10 over the QJ. As there is no chance that I would lead away from either the ace or king in this position I chose to give count be leading low. On this hand it was not a good choice.

Declarer played the queen and the spotlight is on South. Knowing that the ace is with West there is no percentage on covering with the king. If South does cover West can discard one of the club losers on the third round of diamonds and make the contract.  It is text book not to cover the first of touching honours and this hand shows why. As long as the defence is not stupid the contract goes down one giving us 60% on the board.

Returning to the auction, if North can overcall 2S as intermediate then South should raise to 4S but can it be made?  A trump lead by East will result in the defence getting 2 heart tricks and at least 2 diamonds but what happens on the normal lead of HQ?

West  can overtake the lead to return a trump. Declarer wins in dummy, crosses to the CA to ruff the heart, cashes the CK and ruffs a club, hoping for a 3-3 split. When that fails, it is time to play on diamonds, needing to win 1 trick in the suit.  East has shown up with the HQJ and CQJ so the DA is near certain to be with West to justify the opening bid. So there is no point in leading a diamond to

the king. The only chance is to duck the diamond twice and hope the ace falls. As you see this works and 4S is made. If you count the hand, you will be fairly certain that West was 3622 and you would be confident that this line will work.

Not entirely surprisingly, making 4S would be a top for NS just as making 4H the other way would be for EW. Three N/S pairs made 10 tricks in 4S and 2 others managed 11!  Three E/W pairs made 10 tricks in hearts, including one in game.