This hand comes from last year's Swiss Teams event at Brighton. After a mediocre start your correspondent was sitting South against two old men with a WBF card who seemed to know what they were doing. Nothing exciting had happened in the match until this hand.

The auction was going well for the first two rounds. With his massive minor suited hand West thought he would take things slowly at first, North agreed spades with a splinter and West's 4NT showed both minors with significantly better clubs. Then the fun started.

North's 4NT was greeted with dismay and the inevitable director call. The director wandered over, laughed and explained East's options. Now a sensible East might reject the second 4NT, silence South and cause North to guess whether to bid 5 or 6 spades. A less sensible player might accept the insufficient bid with a pass and allow South to show his number of keycards and allow North an informed decision. However, PO Sundelin (for it was none other) was more cunning, and bid 5 to let his partner know of his good club support and see if North/South knew their methods. I'm pleased to report that North/South were on the same wavelength here and correctly stopped in 5. West thought for a long time about bidding 6, probably as a sacrifice but 6 turns out to be cold.

There wasn't much to the play, particularly after West cashed his two aces. +650 and +100 (6-1) from the other table brought in 13 much appreciated IMPs.