The Zimmerman team won the open teams at the 2024 European Transnationals in Poznan, Poland, beating the Turkish Jeo Hidro team in the final.
With only six boards to go, there was little to separate the two teams, but Sjoert Brink and Bas Drijver bid a good slam, and then their teammates added another double-digit swing here. At the other table, North-South played five clubs, which failed by a trick.
Kalita (South) and Klukowski bid to three no-trump instead. Kalita inserted the spade nine from dummy on West’s spade five lead, which held. He was up to seven tricks now, and the obvious place to look for more was diamonds. However, left to tackle the suit himself, declarer would probably lose three diamond tricks and two hearts.
Kalita instead decided to extract East’s black-suit exit-cards first. He cashed the club ace, king and jack, followed by the spade ace before leading a diamond to dummy’s jack. If East won, he would be force either to return a diamond to help declarer set up the suit, or to broach hearts, which would also give declarer a ninth trick if he guessed to put the nine in on the second round. East ducked the diamond jack instead, but Kalita got out with the heart king, and East was back in a similar dilemma. He returned a heart, but declarer’s nine forced the queen for his game-going trick.
That was a well-played hand, working on the sound principle that it can never hurt to have the opponents open a key suit for you.