East	South	West	North
P	2	3	3
P	P	!	3SA
P	P	!

North-South are two of the finest Indian bridge players and what happened to them on the above deal throws some light on the dangers of the Multi 2-diamond bid.

2D was Multi showing weak-2 in either major. West’s 3H showed a strong hand with Heart suit or in case it is not too strong, then the heart length will compensate the HCPs. North bid 3S showing his suit and hoping against hope that partner’s suit is also spades but the bid messed up the situation and now it was the turn of South to add more fuel to the fire and he unnecessarily tried to correct it to 3NT.

In any case, both 3S or 3NT doubled were going to be catastrophic for the NS.

Usually these situations are easily avoided by good players and here also it could have been avoided, if North would have visualized that his partner can have the heart suit (in fact his singleton should have made him more careful – NOT TO BID).

EW would have gone down 1 or 2 depending on how West would have played, giving NS a plus score (the datum on the board turned out to be +80 for EW). Similarly, West could have easily taken 2H down at least 2 but he also could not resist the temptation of bidding (we presume the bidding would have been 2D-Pass-2HPass).

In fact EW would have been in great advantage as East might have doubled 2H of North (for take out) and West could have passed the double
after PASS from South.