Since everyone seemed to be getting away with overcalling in spades when vulnerable versus Muggins, he decided to try it himself. After all, he couldn't get a worse result than he had been having recently.

		S 1093
		H K8
		D AK63
		C A983
S AKQ75    			S J64
H 9752     			H 63
D -        			D J1098542
C K765     			C J
		S 82
		H AQJ104
		D Q7
		C Q1042

W	N	E	S

MM	JH	Duc	SS	

	1NT	-	2D1    
2S	3H	-	4H        
-	-	-

1 Transfer

Muggins tried cashing three rounds of spades. Should Sam ruff or should he discard a club?..... Sam realised that if he ruffed this spade and, if the trumps split 4-2 and, Muggins regained the lead with a club trick, Sam would be in trouble. But discarding a club on the third spade leaving Muggins on lead would not help either. So Sam ruffed the third round after noticing the jack of spades. His strategy was to keep Muggins off-lead by playing clubs in a specialised way.

Sam took three rounds of trumps and received the bad news. Realising that Muggins must have the king of clubs for his vulnerable overcall, Sam now hoped to pin the singleton jack in the East hand. Sam took out Muggins' last trump and played the queen of clubs. Muggins ducked and when East contributed the jack 'the game was over'. Sam picked up the club suit and finished with eleven tricks.

Muggins was thinking of writing to his good friend Karapet when the traveller was opened. A score of -450 got the expected zero. Many North/Souths had made eight or nine tricks for a variety of scores ranging between -100 to +140, depending on the way clubs had been tackled. Small to the ace and a small one back losing to the king.

Some declarers had taken out trumps and played on clubs. Others had left one trump out and played on diamonds before touching clubs.

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