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A “Week-full” of Bridge.

Another National Congress has come to an end, successful for a few, hopefully enjoyable for many. There were around 630 players who took part at some point during the 8 days of bridge. For Ashley Bach and Michael Cornell, there was disappointment at the end that they could not complete the New Zealand Pairs/ Teams double though a first and a second place is hardly a failure. Congratulations then to our overseas visitors, James Coutts, Justin Mill, Mike Doecke and Adam Kaplan who won the big New Zealand Teams prize.

We will reflect on a few of the deals from this week. A play hand with which to start.

 

 

A double challenge for you. Try making 6 on the lead of either K or else on the lead of a low trump from West.

You may have played this board a couple of levels lower where making 10 or 11 tricks is relatively straightforward. However, slam is certainly biddable and indeed makeable though those few players who tried all failed.

Having simply shown a minimum hand, South must be just a little interested in slam after North’s 4 splinter. Interestingly, North would only have been able to make the splinter had South rebid 2 rather than 2 which might be a better rebid as South does have a reasonable hand, worthy of showing their second suit.

Certainly, North would have preferred a third heart for their splinter bid. On this occasion, with South having 3 small diamonds, the doubleton heart makes the slam more challenging.

Let’s start with the situation where West led K. There is a very straightforward line for declarer of winning their ace, drawing trumps and relying on West holding Qxx. In that case, you can make all 13 tricks. That is quite specific and although the spade finesse did work, that line would have failed as the Q came down too soon: there was no way back to dummy after declarer had to ruff a spade. These were the four hands:

 

 An improvement on the above line is to win A, ruff a diamond, play a club to the ace, heart to the king and ruff a club. Draw trumps and play a spade to the ace and ruff a second club. No K appears but when you play a second round of spades and the Q appears, you only need one discard on the spades with South’s low diamond being the only loser.

 

Remember, you can afford to lose a trick. You also have 2 black suits which might produce tricks….not just spades. So, win A, cash A and play a trump to dummy (we will see shortly why it has to be a trump and not a spade). Now play Q and when East follows low, discard one of your diamonds. West will win but cannot do declarer any damage. If they make declarer ruff a diamond, the remaining small diamond can eventually be discarded on the J. If they exit a trump, then South can either rely on the spade finesse or draw trump, play a spade to the ace and ruff a club. With clubs 4-3,the remaining 2 diamonds can be discarded on the 2 established club tricks.

What then when a trump is led initially? You can still adopt the line shown above of ruffing one diamond in dummy and seeing if the K appears doubleton or tripleton. Otherwise, your line should be similar to the line taken of running Q though declarer must avoid going to dummy by playing spades. They should win the trump lead in their hand, cash A and play a second trump to the K. Now proceed as before by playing Q. Declarer has 3 diamonds to discard and must establish dummy’s 5^th club as a winner, 2 diamonds being discarded on clubs and 1 on the third round of spades.

 
Liz and Blair

This deal came from the Open Swiss Pairs where Liz and Blair Fisher were the winners. They were defending this board against 6. Liz did start with a trump lead. South was on the right track but made a fatal mistake early. They won in hand, cashed A but crossed to dummy with a spade to the ace. They played Q losing to Liz’s K and Liz made the excellent return of Q. This cut declarer off from dummy. They could dispose one diamond on the third round of clubs and could ruff a club. They could even ruff a diamond in dummy but there was still one trump to draw and the contract had to fail.

More from the Congress tomorrow.

 

Richard Solomon

 

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