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Daily Bridge in New Zealand

“Kerful” Play.

That’s what we have today. The game is Pairs and overtricks do count for quite a lot…of matchpoints!

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South Deals
E-W Vul

Spade-small

A 5

Heart-small

J 10 6

Diamond-small

A 7 4 3

Club-small

K Q J 3

   

N

W

 

E

S

   
 

Spade-small

J 9 4 2

Heart-small

A K Q 4 2

Diamond-small

8

Club-small

9 7 6

 

West

North

East

South

 

 

 

Pass

Pass

1 Club-small

Pass

1 Heart-small

Pass

1 NT

Pass

2 Club-small

Pass

2 Heart-small

Pass

4 Heart-small

All pass

 

 

 

The auction may be like above. North’s 1NT rebid shows 15-17 hcp. South uses checkback to establish the 5-3 heart fit and South is happy to jump to game.

West leads Heart-small7. How to play this contract? The trump break is friendly.

You have 5 heart tricks, Spade-smallA, Diamond-smallA and 2 club tricks. You need one more trick to make your game. That might come from clubs if West holds the ace or the suit breaks 3-3 though ruffing one spade in dummy ought to bring the 10th trick. It would seem after that the most you could lose is 2 spade tricks and the Club-smallA….a comfortable make.

Yet, can you do better than that? Ruffing two spades in dummy is a possibility though there is a lack of entries to the South hand outside trumps and you cannot shorten your trump suit too much. So, that approach is dangerous. 

There is though another way, one often missed by declarers and seemingly missed by many declarers this time as when the board was played, many only made 10 tricks.

Not so, though, by Charles Ker. Let’s look at all four hands:

South Deals
E-W Vul

Spade-small

A 5

Heart-small

J 10 6

Diamond-small

A 7 4 3

Club-small

K Q J 3

Spade-small

8 7 6 3

Heart-small

7 5

Diamond-small

K Q 9 2

Club-small

A 10 8

 

N

W

 

E

S

 

Spade-small

K Q 10

Heart-small

9 8 3

Diamond-small

J 10 6 5

Club-small

5 4 2

 

Spade-small

J 9 4 2

Heart-small

A K Q 4 2

Diamond-small

8

Club-small

9 7 6

Charles played low from dummy and won Heart-smallQ at trick 1. He played a diamond to the ace and ruffed a diamond low in his hand. Then came a low heart to dummy and a second diamond ruff, this time with Heart-smallK. Next a club to dummy and when West ducked,  Charles ruffed dummy’s remaining diamond with Heart-smallA.

Heart-small4 could then be played to Heart-small10 to draw the remaining trump. So far, Charles had made 3 trump tricks, Diamond-smallA, a club trick and 3 diamond ruffs. That’s 8 tricks. He could now play a second high club which West took with their ace and returned a spade. Charles could not be denied two more tricks, a second club trick and Spade-smallA, and if there was a 3-3 club break, he had one extra, making 11 tricks. An extra trick seemed to appear by magic, or shall we say by a dummy reversal.

Note that if declarer adopts the traditional approach of giving up a spade to ruff one, the defence can usually take 2 spade tricks as West can withhold their Club-smallA for 2 rounds, thus meaning there is no entry to dummy to enjoy the 13th club. As it happens, with Spade-smallKQT in the East hand, one spade ruff does set up Spade-small9 as the winner on the fourth round of the suit but that will not be the normal situation where at least one of the top spade honours is in the four-card suit.

In that case, the 11th trick is best established with a dummy reversal, the approach  Charles took. “Kerful” play indeed.

Richard Solomon

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