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“Nicely played, Partner.”

More from the recent North Island Pairs. Anthony Ker has been one of the country’s leading players for many years. However, Anthony has to take back-stage in today’s deal. He had only two jobs to do (well, three actually but we will not mention the third job just yet). He had to raise his partner’s 1NT opening bid to game and then put down his dummy. The hard work had to be done by his wife, Kathy.

 

You open 1NT (12-15) with your partner bidding straight to 3NT. Short and you hope sweet. West leads 10 (could be from an interior sequence) and you duck the opening lead in both hands. West continues 9 and once more you duck. West persists 7 to East’s K and your ace.
You take a losing club finesse with East returning a club. All follow. Plan the play to make 9 tricks.

 
 Kathy and Anthony, with good declarer play running in the family. 

Kathy commented that she had not played a live tournament for a couple of years. Anthony would have been very happy with the way she applied herself to this tricky contract.

Kathy played initially as above, ducking the first two rounds of spades. It transpired that East had started with K82  presumably West had the 13^th spade, the queen, because when she took the losing club finesse, East returned a second club. Indeed, at that point, she drew an important inference as to where the K was. If East did not hold it, it would be normal for East to switch to a diamond as West could win with their presumed high diamond and cash the Q as the 5^th trick for the defence.
Since this did not happen with East returning a club, East just had to be looking at the K. These were the four hands:

 

 

Kathy cashed dummy’s other club honour and then played three rounds of hearts finishing in the South hand. Next came the J. West threw the remaining low heart and dummy and East a diamond.

She backed her judgement and exited a low diamond. West did not cover though it would not have mattered had they put in the jack. (Kathy would have played East for 10, with West known to having only one more diamond). Kathy played 8 from dummy losing to East’s 10, the 4th trick for the defence. East’s last two cards were K6. They exited 6 with Kathy playing low to take the last two tricks with 9 and A, a very nice end-play.

Then came Anthony’s third job on this deal, to say “nicely played, partner”. It certainly was.

That play helped Kathy and Anthony to 3^rd place in the North Island Pairs. Nice to have you back at the table, Kathy. I am sure Anthony would agree.

Richard Solomon

 

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