Signal received… but misinterpreted
In bridge, a “Santa Claus” is a player who keeps giving gifts to their opponents. On defense, they will often let a contract make that should have gone down. Will you do better than our Santa Claus?
The bidding (North dealer, East–West vulnerable)
Bidding notes:
North has a hand too strong to open 1NT, with 17 HCP, a fine five-card suit, and seven immediate tricks. After West’s overcall, his double shows three Spades with a sound opening.
South’s jump to 3♠ shows a five-card suit and 8–9 HCP.
The opening lead
West leads the Ace of Diamonds. East follows with the 2 and South with the 4. He continues with the King, for East’s 9 and South’s Jack…
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Interesting hand and great article. There is a small error in the writeup. The 2 of D shows an odd number of cards, not even (standard count).
At the end of the hand, I also noticed the even but really odd diamond signal as commented above and wondered thinking, if it were not a simple publishing mistake, West would even consider that east was giving a suit preference signal from a 4 card diamond suit. After declarer follows the second round of diamonds, West knows East has a doubleton diamond suit, and therefore not a suit preference signal. It then points the way for West to lead a 3rd round of diamonds for an overruff of dummy’s spades by east’s possible higher spade but to west’s dismay, east has a 3rd diamond! After the smoke clears West wins the spade Ace and thinks to lead the 4th diamond for an uppercut, East has made a brilliant false card with the 2 to get partner to forget about leading any hearts! ….