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Today and tomorrow, I want to remember Alan Turner, a huge personality in so many aspects of our game. Tomorrow, we will also feature an obituary to Alan but today we have a deal in which Alan demonstrated his skill at the bridge table. Some hands call for technical ability. Others need some something extra.

 Try this:

 

Alan’s partner opened the North hand with a strong Precision style 1. This enabled East to overcall 1 and Alan, South, to make a positive 1 response. Thereafter, Alan was rather driven by his partner to reach the rather optimistic 6 slam.
West, dutifully, led their partner’s suit, 5. Plan the play. West has 3 trumps, East singleton J.

 Alan had a seemingly tricky job of making 6. In isolation, it looked like he had just one chance. 

That was to play for West to hold the KQ and for the suit to break 3-3 so that he could dispose of his club loser on the 13^th heart. However, Alan rejected that line because of East’s overcall on a suit jack high. Alan was sure that East held at least one of the heart honours.

So, he won the opening diamond lead and drew trumps in three rounds finishing in the dummy (North) hand. His next play was to call for the 4.

 

Of course, East should have played low but East imagined that Alan held Q, perhaps even singleton or doubleton. So, East took his K and the rest was easy for Alan, finessing Q and discarding his club loser to make his slam.

A 1991 “Bridging Treasures” article about Alan in New Zealand Bridge Magazine concluded, “ It is not the unlucky expert whose percentage play failed who will be remembered. It is he who finds the winning play.” Alan found a lot of winning plays both at the table and in the administration of the game.

Tomorrow, we will look at a lighter story of a board played by Alan.

 

Richard Solomon

 

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