This is aHand:

Bidding.

Here we have an obvious opening bid of 1â™  in third seat and partner responds 1NT. We have seen this response before in VuBridge and, no doubt, we will see it again. North is showing 6 to 9 points and something approaching a balanced hand.

We can easily deduce that the combined hands cannot be worth a game contract so we have to concentrate on finding the best part-score. Passing 1NT with a 5∙4∙3∙1 pattern is a little unwise and it would be quite wrong to insist on Spades by rebidding 2♠.

In these cases we should show our second suit – always provided that we can allow partner to put us back to our first suit cheaply. Here it is right and proper to bid 2♥, offering North the choice between Hearts and Spades. If partner is indifferent to both suits he would at least have the decency to give preference by putting us back to 2♠.

Note that this preference bid would not raise the level of the auction to the three-level – an important consideration when we are thinking of bidding our second suit.

As it happens, Hearts is where partner wants to play the hand and he expresses that preference by Passing 2♥.

Play.

Realizing that North is likely to be short in Spades (a subtle but important inference, this) West leads a trump. East-West now play three rounds of Hearts, denying us the opportunity of ruffing more than one Spade in the dummy. On many deals that would be a killing defense but – unluckily for the opposition – not today.

We win the third trump and knock out the ♦A. Winning the return we cash three top Spades and ruff one on the table. This sets up the ♠10 as an extra trick so we record an overtrick.