Ekren Follow up hand – as promised
Defend the hand with me.
When pd opened 2♦ I briefly considered raising preemptively to 3♥ but then decided that I’d rather compete to 3♥ . Also, at this vulnerability I wanted to give them every chance of getting in the auction, but even I had not dreamed of how high the auction will skyrocket.
Having found the opponents where I was more than happy to defend, I doubled and started off with a trump lead.
Declarer played the 2, and pd – wonder of wonders – produced the Queen. To add to my astonishment, he also found a small ♣ to return.
Lets take a pause. Manas bid only his 3 card suit, that leaves him with maximum of 3 diamonds. and atleast 4-3 in majors.
On 2nd trick declarer played the Ten, and not wanting him on lead to play a diamond towards dummy, I covered with king to dummy’s Ace.
He now pulled ♦ K from dummy, which I won and returned a 3rd ♣ partner discarding a discouraging spade.
Time to look at the full hand.
Remarkable, that 2!H bid!
The bigger problem was that 2N may not have been agreed as lebensohl though they may be playing that over a weak 2 dbl. Still Ekren would have produced a swing since NS might have been in 1N, either making or going -1 vis a vis 3C down 2
Yes, you are right about 2N perhaps not being discussed. Manas probably shd’ve bid it anyway – whether pd takes it as lebensohl or scrambling – both work for him. Did he think it might be taken as natural? We’ll have to ask him.