This is aHand:

On this deal it looks as though our partner, sitting North, has done too much. On the other hand, maybe he has judged it to perfection.

Bidding.

East, dealer, starts proceedings with 1♥ and we have an obvious intervention of 1♠. True, 1♠ over 1♥ doesn’t take up much bidding space but we do have a good five-card suit and it is worth dipping our toes in the water now, while we still can.

West responds 2♣ and partner raises us gently to 2♠. Although we are unaware of this at the time North has already made East’s life distinctly awkward. What do you suggest that East should bid? 3♦? That’s pushing it – up at the three-level with no guarantee that West has any interest in Diamonds or Hearts. Pass, then? Well, they used to take men out at dawn and shoot them for such acts of cowardice in the face of the enemy.

East, quite reasonably, decides to support his partner’s suit with 3♣ – much the best solution when pushed into a corner.

Neither we nor West have anything more to say, and this is Passed to partner who decides to press on with 3♠. Knowing when to bid and when to Pass in these situations is very difficult – here North has judged it very well.

3â™  buys the auction.

Play.

West leads his partner’s suit, the ♥J and we pause to Count and Plan.

Despite being heavily outgunned (the points are split 23-17 in favor of East-West) we can see a genuine chance of making 3♠. If East (the opener) has the ♦A we could make five Spades, one Diamond, one Club and two ruffs on the table.

With this in mind, we cross to the ♣A and lead a Diamond to the ♦K, losing to the ♦A. This defeats 3♠, although we are still able to scramble eight tricks for one off.

Was North wrong to bid 3♠? Well, let’s look at what would have happened in 3♣.

As defenders we would make one Spade trick, no Heart tricks, no Diamond trick and one Club trick. East-West would have made at least ten tricks in Clubs.

If the ♦A had been lying right we might (just!) have held 3♣ to nine tricks but now we would have made 3♠. Either way, it was right to play in 3♠ as we were certain to get a minus score otherwise. By bidding to the three-level it was a case of heads we win, tails we don’t lose.

How did North know to bid to 3â™  with only 7 points? Well, the "trick" is that (in general) we should bid to the level of the known number of trumps. North knew that our side had nine trumps so he was justified in bidding to the nine-trick level.

This may appear odd logic but it works surprisingly often. It is a subject to which we shall return in later issues.