Andrea Manno for Italy defended superbly in this deal from the 2025 Bermuda Bowl quarterfinals.
Sam Bahbout and Steven De Donder, for Belgium, reached six clubs after an artificial sequence in which North used a version of Key Card Blackwood and South showed two key cards with the club queen. Massimiliano di Franco led the spade eight, which rode around to South’s 10. Bahbout ran the club queen at trick two, Manno winning with the king after West followed with the two. Take a moment to consider how you might defend as East now.
A spade continuation, trying to give a ruff, would be right only if South had 6-4 distribution in the black suits, but with that hand he might have bid the far more descriptive two spades rather than three clubs at his second turn. Moreover, West would likely have dropped a higher club as a suit-preference signal on the first round of trumps if he wanted a spade ruff.
A heart shift was unlikely to be necessary either. Declarer had shown the missing key cards, and he was relatively unlikely to risk an immediate heart finesse, leaving dummy’s strong diamonds on the shelf. Manno returned a diamond instead, straight into the tenace. With declarer having only one diamond, this effectively cut his communications. If South tried to discard hearts on the top diamonds, East could ruff. A heart finesse would also fail.
On any other defense, declarer could have won and, with some good guesswork, have achieved a show-up squeeze against West.