Jack Paterson opened an off-centre 14-16 1NT with the North cards and North-South reached the excellent 4 contract. Gunnar Hallberg led the king and ace of hearts and found that his partner had three cards in the suit. Knowing that East had nothing of use for the defence in the way of high cards, Hallberg led another heart at trick three, giving a worthless ruff and discard. Brian Short chose to trump with dummy’s J and then took the spade finesse. Hallberg won and played a fourth heart. Tosh McIntosh ruffed in with his lowly 5 and this was enough to promote a trump trick for West.

Hallberg was playing his partner for 9-x, in which case his line of continuing hearts twice would have had an excellent chance of success. With the way declarer played it, rising with the J, East’s 5 was good enough. Declarer could have recovered by playing A and Q at tricks four and five, but this would have given up on East holding K-x and might have cost the point-a-board element of the scoring.

Neil Rosen and Martin Jones bid and made 3 as North-South for the Spring Foursomes team in the other room. They gained 4 IMPs and went on to win the match by 48 VPs to 12.

Against the only other declarer in 4 (see the write-up of the best bid hand), West led his top two hearts and switched to his singleton club.