Aggressive, even wild, preemption is all the rage in today’s tournament world. The perpetrators brag about their many successes but tend not to mention the failures. The failures aren’t nearly as much fun. West’s flighty pre-empt triggered an amazing show of force by NorthSouth, ending in a poor grand slam. The pre-empt guided the play.
South won the opening trump lead and drew three rounds of trumps, ending in his hand. He cashed the ace of spades, the ace of diamonds, and the ace of clubs, discarding a low diamond from dummy. Declarer overtook the queen of diamonds with dummy’s king and discarded his remaining spade on the jack of diamonds. At this point West had followed suit to one spade, two hearts, and three diamonds. Perhaps expecting all of West’s remaining cards to be clubs, South confidently led dummy’s queen of spades for a ruffing finesse against the king. This was a winner, and South quickly claimed his contract.
This was not a success for the aggressive pre-empt. Without the pre-empt, North-South might have had room to discover the big hole in the spade suit and stop in a small slam. Even if they bid the grand slam, there would be losing options in the play. Declarer might try to ruff out the king of clubs, for example, or get tangled up in a cross ruff. We’ll never know, but certainly the pre-empt did not gain for East-West.
