There are times when a partnership misunderstanding, which would normally spell disaster, instead produces a spectacularly good result.

For example, take this deal from the match between Canada and Panama in the 1980 world team championship. The Canadian North-South pair reached four spades as shown, making five after West led the ace and another heart.

But when a Panamanian pair held the North-South hands, the bidding went:

North’s four-club bid was a “splinter,” indicating a singleton club. Supposedly, it accepted South’s last bid suit, hearts, as trump. Accordingly, South, with a minimum opening bid and no interest in a slam, signed off with four hearts.

North, who had no desire whatever to play with hearts as trump, then corrected four hearts to four spades. But South, acting under the delusion that hearts had been agreed upon as the trump suit, read the four-spade bid as an ace-showing cuebid.

He therefore cuebid five clubs to show the ace of clubs. North then cuebid diamonds, but South had run out of cuebids and signed off with five hearts. This did not discourage North in the least, and, having heard his partner bid hearts three times, he jumped to six spades.

All these machinations had a deleterious effect upon West, who was left with a difficult choice of leads. Unfortunately, he decided to lead a club, hoping to find his partner with the queen. South gratefully took East’s ten with the queen, drew trump and discarded one of dummy’s hearts on the club ace to bring in the slam.

Tomorrow >> Famous Hand.

— Steve Becker