A hand from the super league of the MBA Monsoon league, where a bidding accident led to an unusual card position:

Click on 'Next' to follow the play.

3NT is cold, but North had skipped his 'support doubles' class and bid 2♠ on only 3 cards.

East wins the opening heart lead and plays another top heart, which south ruffs.

Down to three trumps in each hand, declarer sees the futility of trying to draw trumps and starts ruffing things:

A diamond to the Ace, heart ruff, back to dummy with the diamond King and ruff a diamond in hand. Club Ace, a club to the Jack holds and when declarer ruffs the last heart with the spade Jack, West is down to his A109xx of trumps in this position:



West needs to underruff this to beat the contract!

Sadly, the actual hand didn't have the critical ♠8, so declarer went down 2 for -500. In fact, he was so disturbed that he even accepted a faulty claim of -800. The other table played a peaceful, boring 3NT claimed after 3 rounds of hearts.

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