With this deal South opens the auction with a 1D bid, West passes and North considers his/her hand. Because 1D bids can be awkward to handle some players play an ‘inverted diamond response’ thus a raise of 1D -2D is a strong bid, and forcing, a jump to 3D is weak and pre-emptive. However with the North hand the major suit points may be valueless so bid 2C showing 10 points plus and a club suit, but may be weaker than a 2D response. East has a six loser hand with lots of holes in the suits; add in the vulnerability and decide to pass!

South bids 2NT, thus denying a four card major suit. North should now reduce the major suit points to (say) half their point value and decide to bypass 3NT, because it is inadvisable, but bid 4D as an invitational bid: although South has 14 points they are too concentrated to accept the invitation, bringing only 3 or 4 tricks to the final contract.

¹balanced 12-14 points

Results

2DS +2; 3SE -1; 3SE =; 3NTS -4; 5DN -1 (twice)

 N-S 1^st   H Clohessy & J Ralph…….64.6% 

         2^nd W Jurgensen & R Wood…57.9%

 E-W 1st K Tyndall & E Rodrigues…64.6%

          2^nd L Kolesky & G Dempers…60.8%