The winning USA1 team beat England narrowly in the quarterfinals of the Bermuda Bowl before blowing out Belgium in the semifinals and nipping Denmark by 17 in the final.
In this deal from the USA1-England encounter, England’s Tom Townsend judged that his side would not win the auction and opted for a lead-directing one diamond in third seat as East. This worked nicely when Ben Handley-Pritchard led a diamond against four spades from the West cards, Townsend winning with the queen. The diamond nine could only be from a doubleton in East-West’s carding methods, so Townsend could imagine a third-round diamond ruff. However, there was no time to waste. An attempt to find West’s entry for a diamond continuation might not work. Here, for example, a heart shift to the ace would establish dummy’s heart king for a diamond discard.
Townsend accurately continued diamonds himself, selecting the king to force out the ace. This way, he could ruff out declarer’s diamond jack on the third round, leaving South bereft of a discard on the fourth diamond. That did not matter here, but the diamond king still worked well in that declarer was in the wrong hand to lead a heart up. Had Eddie Wold, South, been allowed to win the second diamond in hand to play a heart, West might have had a nasty guess as to how to reach the East hand.
As it was, Townsend got back in with the trump ace to provide a diamond ruff. The heart ace won the setting trick.