This deal occurred during a national team championship played in San Francisco in 1981. The distribution of the four hands was certainly unusual, with two voids and three singletons scattered around the table. And, as one might expect, the bidding reflected the peculiar nature of the hand.

At the first table, South opened the bidding, after two passes, with a perfectly normal one-spade bid. West doubled for takeout, whereupon North jumped directly to five spades!

This was not intended as an effort to get to a slam; on the contrary, North was simply doing as much as he could to make it difficult for East to enter the bidding. From North’s viewpoint, it seemed likely that East-West could make either a game or a slam in hearts or diamonds, and he was trying to make things as difficult as possible for them.

Both East and South passed five spades, and West doubled again. Everyone passed, and when the smoke cleared, South had made five spades doubled with two overtricks!

He ruffed the club lead and cashed the ace of spades and ace of diamonds, discarding dummy’s heart. He then crossruffed diamonds and clubs until dummy’s last two clubs became established and so finished with 13 tricks for a score of 1,250 points. All this was accomplished with a total of only 13 high-card points in the combined North-South hands!

Remarkably, at the second table the bidding, the play and the outcome were exactly the same, and the deal proved to be a washout!

Tomorrow: It’s a very logical game.