A Bit Much


J 8 6
9 7 3
8 4
K 9 7 6 4
A 10 K Q 9 7 5
Q J 10 8 6 5 4 A 2
J 10 5 A K 9 6 3
8 3
4 3 2
K
Q 7 2 Vulnerability: Both
A Q J 10 5 2 Opening lead: 6 of hearts

SouthWestNorthEast
Pass Pass Pass 1
2 2 2 NT Dbl
Redbl 3 Pass 4
Dbl 4 Pass Pass
Dbl Pass 5 Dbl
All pass

Down 1100 when those guys were only going for game? Can they make slam? Yes in either hearts or spades if they drop the stiff K, and some were doing just that. But these guys were settling for game! And 680 points -- 710 at best. So it's cold comfort to go down less than the slam score that they weren't bidding.
How many tricks must N-S take to make that a good sac? Well, the answer is 9, of course. At five clubs, they can afford to go down only 2. And is there any suggestion that they're into a 9-trick fit? Both partners pass their first time around, South then overcalling at a modest 2 level, North then coming in with a cockamamie 2 no bid on 4 hcp's. He knew he could run from a double. Did he think he could hornswoggle the opponents into thinking there wasn't a good club fit (when he ran)? I don't know. It looks like a fancy, schmancy bid thrown in to no good purpose.
There are a few points to be made here, the first being that in sacrificing, there is no cushion if you overbid by "one too many". By this I mean that if you and partner bid in good faith to make three clubs and find you're overbid by one for, call it, minus 100, you may find that the opponents couldn't made their 110 two heart or two spade bid, or even 140 open to them. And you're satisfied. But in sac bidding, by definition, if you bid "one too many" you've lost more than those guys could've made in their own bidding.
Secondly, when you overcall 2 clubs on a hand like that, and I certainly don't fault that bid, you're already overbid if your partner has nothing, i.e., partner has a singleton club and a couple of hcp's. That's part of the game: we chance these bids, and of course, the lowest possible bid with a mere third of the hcp's, calls for you to pick up the majority of the tricks. But we chance them because if partner has nothing, they can make a lot and because we rarely find our partner with nothing and because we often find a right nice contract by entering the bidding offsetting the times that the bids turn out costly. Okay?
With that in mind, we can see that 2 clubs is a very safe bid, though it could've been set one trick, and that 3 clubs, to which North presumably would have run on a double, would have been safe on that superfit and considering what those guys could make, but that at that point, the scarcity of hcp's catches up with them. Four clubs would've been "one too many" (though not if it keeps them out of slam, of course). But here South isn't content with having offered his dominant suit. He feels he must double their game bid when he could've kept the opps out of slam by simply passing.
Hm-m-mmm. I didn't think of it at first, but North's fancy-schmancy 2 no bid must have had some bearing on that South's double. I was going to say that South should've known that there couldn't be many club defensive tricks on that superfit when I saw that North hadn't bid clubs! He said 2 no. How many points should North have for that bid? Or better still, how many tricks do you think South could reasonably count on from a partner who makes a free bid of 2 no?
Well, I think it would be tight, but given that North bid 2 no after the opps had bid both hearts and spades, and certainly should have at least one trick in each suit as a minimum and looking at the A of clubs, etc., South's disastrous double of 4 spades doesn't look near so ridiculous after all. Which should tell you something about getting fancy in the bidding. You don't wanna mislead your partner even if you thereby succeed in misleading the opps. Anybody can do that. But not everybody can bid well.