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Warm-up and “on fire”!

That’s one way to describe the past weekend for Christchurch’s David Taylor and Pavla Fenwick at their local club’s pre National Congress mini-Congress. With just a little help from Max Morrison and Leon Meier (the latter pair certainly had “Lady Luck” on their side by right-siding a grand-slam off a cashing ace: the wrong suit was led), Pavla and David won the Teams by 3.71vps from the fast-finishing Pamela Nisbet- Liz Fitzgerald and Dave Mikaera – Les Frater and then finished 2^nd in the Sunday 5A Pairs. Only a fine second session 70.19% from Graeme Tuffnell and Mehboob Chiba prevented Pavla and David from completing the double.

This board was very significant in that Teams victory.

 

You reach 6 with, as instructed, North leading J to South’s A. South switches to 10. Over to you?

1NT was 15-17, an upgrade with all those controls. There was no super-accept to the transfer with East, Pavla, taking the opportunity to try for slam with a club splinter. South’s lead-directing double encouraged David to use key-card, especially as he held four trumps and now a well-placed K. The missing Q was not a deterrent as, not knowing her partner held 4 trumps, Pavla would have at least 6 to try for slam.

After the club lead and 10 switch, David deduced that South was not leading away from K and therefore took his A, drew trumps in one round,  played K discarding a heart from dummy, ruffed a club and ran all dummy’s spades. With one spade left to play, these cards remained:

 

On K, South discarded a diamond allowing David to discard the now redundant 9. North, too had to discard a diamond and three rounds of diamonds now saw the slam home.

David commented afterwards that he had a "key" decision with three cards left. On the A, should he  play 7 or 2 under the A. Had he played 2, he would have been left with “the beer card” to win trick 13. He spared his partner a trip to the bar by retaining the 2, a rather nice card to win trick 13 on this deal.

All up, a rather nicely played double squeeze. These were the four hands:

 

The slam can be beaten by an initial diamond lead as that breaks up the squeeze. Without South’s double, North had a choice of minor suits to lead and might just have made the right choice.

Richard Solomon

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