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Daily Bridge in New Zealand
Liz and Blair Fisher.
Bid or Defend?
We pick up from yesterday the story of the final match in the Wellington ANZAC Teams with Fisher (Liz and Blair Fisher, Ashley Bach – Leon Meier) needing at least 14 vps from the 10 board head to head match against Berrington (Ian Berrington – Graeme Tuffnell, Malcolm Mayer – Brian Mace) for victory. We saw Fisher win 7 very useful imps yesterday. What then here?
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West |
North |
East |
South |
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1 NT |
Pass |
2 |
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Dbl |
3 |
Pass |
3 |
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Dbl |
Pass |
? |
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1NT was 11-14. West’s first double showed good hearts and the second take-out style and a good hand. 3
was a super accept with North preferring their partner to be declarer. What say you?
You know your partner has a void spade, 5 hearts and a reasonable hand. Your options are 4
, 4 or pass. Surely you cannot make 9 tricks in 3NT?
Blair Fisher chose to defend and that proved to be a very good decision.
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Board 17 |
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West |
North |
East |
South |
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1 NT |
Pass |
2 |
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Dbl |
3 |
Pass |
3 |
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Dbl |
All pass |
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Yes, Liz Fisher only had 4 hearts for her first double but as she said “they were good ones.” We can see why North did not want to be declarer. They hoped that their partner had some control in the heart suit.
South ducked Liz’s K lead and won the heart continuation. Hoping for some good news in the minors, South tried a low club. Liz played 
Q. Whether South took or ducked this trick, Blair was destined to score a club ruff. Declarer took their ace to start on trumps. Blair won ace and continued clubs.
The defence took 2 heart tricks, 
A, one trick in each minor and a club ruff for +300, down 2. Had South tried to draw trumps earlier, they would lose control of the deal still having to lose tricks in both minors and having limited entries to the South hand.
With Liz only having 4 hearts, both 4 and 3NT would have been unmakeable.
All 5 other tables in the final saw East or West declare 5. This contract had to fail with two aces to lose and the K off-side. Had the diamond finesse worked, Blair and Liz would have scored another trick against 3x.
Thus, Fisher collected 8 further imps in a low-scoring match. In all Fisher won the match 23-8 imps to score 14.80 vps and win the event by 2.53 vps.
Richard Solomon
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