All News

Debs repeats her on-line success.

You only seem to have three losers but can you find ten winners in the following deal? The opposition are not going to make it easy for you!

 

 

With a piece of help from the opposition who could have left you in your minor part-score, you reach 4. After passing first time, your partner bid all the way to game on discovering the spade fit. West leads 4 to East’s 10. East continues with J on which West discards a club. Q comes next. Over to you.

 

The WBF, in conjunction with BBO, run two women’s bridge competitions every year.  The "spring" event (well, further north, that is this season!) has finished recently. It ran for a week with many day and night events. There are three categories and an overall, each category with quite large fields:

Individual:               playing a couple of hands with each other player

Individual robots:   pairs but everyone has a robot partner

Pairs:                       play either with a real partner or with a robot

 

For each event you earn points for a good finish, and the points depend in part on the size of the field in the event.  Your best ten point scores count to the final ranking in each category, and again the best ten overall to the overall.

 

The events are scattered all around the clock, but lean toward better times for Europe.  That also impacts on field size and hence which events might get you the maximum (0.75 points) for winning them.

 

Debs Smith, from Havelock North, won two of the three categories(Individual Robots and Pairs) and was 1st overall having won the Autumn 2022 event and having finished 4th in the 2022 Spring event. As per last year, she played mainly with a robot throughout. That's great consistency.

 Back then to our problem which confronted Debs in one of her sessions.

 

The key missing card seems to be J. Also, in such a situation, players often forget they can set up the dummy hand much more easily than their own. Indeed, conceding a diamond early and hoping to set up South’s diamonds would have led to certain defeat.

 

Debs had alternative plays at trick 3. She could ruff with 9 hoping East held the J: after all, East had opened the bidding. Alternatively, she could ruff high, a line which would fail if East held J and more than one spade since after cashing her other high spade, Debs would have to play 9, finessing West for J.

She chose this second line, ruffed with A, cashed A and was rewarded when this was the full lay-out:

 

 

She cashed Q and played 9, finessing and could then repeat the finesse and draw West’s last trump before cashing her three club winners, then A, conceding a diamond at trick 13. Nicely played and no doubt a very enjoyable week for Debs in repeating her success of 2022. This win comes with free entry to this year's Women's World Pairs.

 

Richard Solomon

Go Back View All News Items