This piece is curtesy of Michael McGloughlin.

This hand arose in a recent Sean Stack Memorial competition played in the Regent Bridge Club. Many readers will have known Sean who passed a couple of years ago and the trophy for the competition in his memory was donated by Brendan O’Brien and Ranald Milne. The format of the competition is a 2 division round robin league of 6 rounds with the leading teams after the round robin section playing semi-finals and eventually a final
On this hand large swings were recorded in quite a few of the matches. (Hands are duplicated across the room. Some teams made game in Hearts North South and Game in Clubs East West. Amongst those teams suffering the biggest adverse swing (Game and Slam) was that led by my team captain who held the East Hand above and had the following auction and who remains nameless in deference to the end result

West North East South
1C … 2S … P …. 4H
P …. P …. 5C … P
P …. 5H … P …. P
P

The big problem arose on the first round as the Captain and his partner who employ a five card major structure, the main drawback to which is that a 1C opening can be, and often is made with only 3 or sometimes only 2 in the suit. Holding poor club support and very scattered values he felt it would be imprudent to support Clubs, overly optimistic to bid 3D and fatal to negative double, which invariably guarantees 4 hearts. His choice of Pass left his partner hopelessly cut out of the Auction went it came round to her at 4H. With losers all over the place opposite a Passed partner she Passed and rather than sell out to 4H he competed with 5C. This went to North judged well to bid on in Hearts (largely because of the Singleton Diamond) and there the auction fizzled out.
Declarer had little difficulty in scoring 11 tricks losing just 1 Diamond and 1 Spade.
At the other Table the Auction started 2C by West (Natural (Good Clubs suit and 11-15 HCP). Thereafter East with the VOID in Hearts was well placed to judge the power and trick taking potential of his hand. The Final contract of 6C posed little problem in the play. In fact in the absence of the Spade Ace lead declarer has an easy route to 13 tricks. This gave a swing of 1370 + 450 a total of 1820 or 18imps
Many years ago one of the leading English writers recommended that in the highly competitive Auction it is always wise to bid one more a motto that East failed to follow when allowing the opponents to play 5 Hearts and equally South in the other room also ignored the rule when allowing West to declare 6 Clubs. The par for the hand is clearly 100 points to East West from 6H Doubled
The message from this deal Take out insurance when opponents bid to game or slam and you have what you know is a likely cheap save. From time to time you will be turning a small plus of 100 to a minus of 100 or 300 but far better this than to suffer the indignity of losing over 1800 on one hand.