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Imagination at Work.

We hope that our top players do have flair and imagination. There are other less flashy attributes you need to have to be a top player but a touch of out of the ordinary flair every so often, the “champagne” that goes with grinding out overtricks or beating contracts one should.

What further introduction do you need to the following recent problem? As yet, the player and his position at the table have to be identified, well by name! Over then to you…and this is the situation:

 

An everyday sequence? Maybe not! Your redouble showed precisely three spades though that piece of information seemed more relevant to South than your partner. There’s something afoot!

You lead a high diamond on which your partner contributes 10 and somewhat to your surprise, declarer follows with 4. What do you play to trick 2?

It is time to say what you may have already guessed. South is a pretty smart player and did not bid 6 lightly. Surely, he does not have the remaining small diamond? Bluff or double bluff? So, what is the 10 about?

It seems equally improbable that South is missing the A. He would have employed some ace asking method if that was the case. The same would apply regarding the other black ace.

We seem to be heading down one direction..well, I suppose 2. There was nothing wrong in continuing diamonds, except that you would very soon be writing down -980 while if you let the 3 slip from your hand, +50 would be much more appealing!

Welcome to Leon Meier’s world:

 

Leon was very interested in the meaning of that redouble. A Support Double and its close cousin, the Support Redouble, are often very useful bridge tools. They kind of were here as well, useful for Leon. He knew his partner had no more than one spade and was therefore marked with some length in hearts. (As an aside, if North had the length that Leon needed, would they not have bid 2 rather than 2? That said, there was nothing against North laying down about three hearts and five plus quite useful clubs.)

Their really was no danger (well almost no danger) of your wrecking your partner’s trump holding by switching to a trump. There was no reason why Leon had to have so many and such potentially good spades but he had something rather unusual for his quadruple jump. Without the trump switch, he could ruff three spades in dummy, enough to set up his 5^th one (he knew the spade break!) and discard one on the K. The defence’s only remaining threat, 9, was conveniently in the East hand with West’s 3 being no match for dummy’s 8 on the fourth round of spades. 6 bid and made when the trump switch was not found.

It looks like that 10 at trick 1 was to veer West from switching to what might have been a damaging club switch at trick 2. 

Was 6 well judged or slightly over-ambitious? It brought in 11 rather useful imps for Leon's side. Full marks this time for flair. A couple of boards later, his good judgement kept his partner clear of a combined 32 hcp slam. More of that tomorrow.

Richard Solomon

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