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It’s a tough game!

“A Cruel Game”…but for whom?

Matthew McManus was one of the winners in the early April Auckland Easter Teams. Today, we will see that Matthew is not just a top-class director but also a pretty fine player as well. Here’s your chance to make a rather difficult slam when the omens do not look too favourable:

 

Matthew and his bridge partner, Michael Ware, play a very artificial relay style called “Crunch”. On the above hands, they took 16 mainly artificial bids to reach 6 to be played by Matthew, South. He received the 9 lead from West won in the South hand and played AK discarding a spade from dummy. All fine so far except that on the second round of diamonds, East discarded Q.

Suddenly, you are faced with the prospect of not just one but two trump losers. Oh, there was still the small point of finding a place for the spade loser, too. Not an easy prospect or as Matthew commented at the time: “It’s a cruel game”! So, what’s your line from here?

 

Bridge is indeed a cruel game but Matthew may have been addressing his opponents with that statement because as West, Neil Stuckey, put it. “After saying how cruel bridge could be, Matthew had a long think and very soon, I was writing down -920 on my scoresheet!”

 

To make such a contract, you have to make your opponent ruff at the critical moment (trick 10) when they only have a couple more trumps left, forcing them to lead into declarer’s hand for the last two tricks. You also have to combine losing the outside loser and the trump trick at the same time.

 

Here, then are the four hands:

 

 

At trick 4, Matthew played K and then a heart to the ace and a heart ruff back to hand. Back to dummy with a spade to the king to be followed by a second heart ruff. That was 8 tricks played and then came the two top clubs. Notice, that West had to follow throughout and was thus left with J98 which may have initially looked like two tricks for the defence. Meanwhile, Matthew held Q10 and his spade loser.

Suddenly, three defensive winners evaporated into just one as Matthew exited a low spade from dummy which Neil, West, had to ruff. He then had to play a trump round to Matthew’s trump holding, giving Matthew two more winners and his contract.

It was interesting that Matthew chose to ruff two hearts when he could have ruffed two clubs or indeed one club and one heart, both lines being unsuccessful.  Why did he choose to ruff the two hearts?

He was influenced by East’s discard at trick 3, Q. He said that seemed like an easy discard for East to make, meaning that East had a lot of clubs (in order to throw Q, East would certainly hold JT9 and maybe others too.) This meant clubs were likely not to be breaking. He could also have tried the heart finesse and exiting a heart at the end rather than a spade (Throw the spade loser on the third round of hearts.). However, he felt the spade lead was a doubleton (hopefully not a singleton) and if West had shorter spades and clubs, chances were reasonable that West held four hearts.

He was right. A combination of excellent timing and deduction enabled the slam to be made.  

 
After making this slam, Matthew 
could afford a nice smile

 

So, Matthew was not just correct about the way to make his slam. He may not have meant it at the time but bridge is indeed a “cruel game” if your side has three potential winners against a small slam and makes only one of them. Neil did add graciously that it was “a pleasure to watch a difficult hand being played perfectly.” Nice comment, Neil, and of course, nicely played, Matthew.

Richard Solomon

More for our JIN Club members on Friday.

 

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