Avoiding a Striped-Tailed Ape

The draw for the first round of the Hubert put us in a familiar position as cannon fodder for the Hughes-Huggett-Preston combo. After many losing matches to this group, we managed to scrape a very narrow win, helped by the opponents being below par and this outrageous slice of good fortune.

I was South, and failed to notice East's double on the second round, so thought that I had enough to raise to slam. West's double was intended as Lightner for a club lead, but as his partner had already doubled 5♥, a more likely explanation was just that the idiot sitting South had no idea what he was doing. Anyway, East led a diamond which Barrie ruffed and led a heart to the jack. With the fortunate positions in both black suits the slam rolled in for +1210.

In the other room North chose to open 1♠. and bid 5♥ over 5♦ on the next round. South converted to 5♠ but this went one down.

We won the match by around 100 points (aggregate scoring in the Hubert). Making an overtrick in 5♥ doubled - the most likely outcome if I had noticed East's double - would not have been enough to win the match.