oldem, on 2018-May-05, 01:56, said:
The aggressiveness was meant to belong to South for his "double". He knew that East's response of 1NT showed limited strength; he expected his side could have had up to 17~18 HCPs; and that his holding of ♠KJ3 behind the ♠ bidder could be valuable. He could have bidden 2♥ himself but this was too misleading. Therefore, he just "doubled" and waited for the best.
Unless you got the auction wrong: The double was before opener limited his hand,
and this means, the X is just garbage, unless you tell us, that South was able to look
in the future.
If the auction comes to South a 3rd time, he may enter, but not at his 2nd bid, he got
away with it, fine, this happens, sometimes you have play bad bridge to have a chance to
catch up, but rationlizing / defending bad calls, ...
South was lucky, that East was not able to show his inv. (-) strength, which makes it
hard for West to hit 3H, maybe it was also IMP scoring, ...