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For Junior, Intermediate and Novice players…others, too? It’s Fri day.

Missing Monarchs.

Some basic techniques are displayed in today’s deal. Shortly, you will be asked to form a plan to make 9 tricks but let’s glance at the bidding first:

 

After South’s 12-14 1NT opening and West’s natural 2 overcall, North was at a loss. They felt they should bid something but nothing really appealed. They could have doubled (for take-out, alas) but decided on a natural 2NT. Partner can look after the spade suit! South decided they had a maximum 13 count (nice clubs!) and raised to game.

West led K. Plan the play. 

Dummy was good and bad. Declarer had all the aces but not a king was in sight! It looked a good hand to practice finesses, in 3 suits! Yet, first of all, South remembered the idea of cutting the defenders off from their dangerous source of tricks, spades.

That means ducking trick 1. West continues with Q. Assuming West started with at least 5 spades for their overcall, there is no need to duck again  (East followed to both rounds of spades.) should East win the lead with a minor suit king. However, with 3 spades in each hand, there is nothing to be lost by playing low again. A third round of spades might produce a useful discard from East and if West switches, that must be good for declarer, too.

So, West won the first 2 tricks and continued spades, East discarding 4 (low like that suit). It was time to start finessing and clubs seemed a good idea as you have club entries back to the South hand if the finesse lost (not so in diamonds). So, Q which held trick 4 and then J which also held the trick. Now was time to play 10 and that won the next trick. This finessing technique seemed good. Whoever said finesses failed! They do, because when you played a second diamond, West discarded 7!

So, it was just time to count tricks. A, 3 clubs and 3 diamonds. We either needed 2 heart tricks or if the K fell on the third round of the suit, we would only need 1 heart trick. So, win A in dummy. These were the 4 hands:

 

Lay down A but no joy as East discarded another heart. So, lose a diamond to East who switched to a low heart. Remember, we now needed 2 heart tricks. So far, our finesse success rate was 50%. We have to be brave because if West held K, our contract would fail. West is definitely the danger hand but there is nothing for it but to take the heart finesse. The previous signalling of the defenders indicated the heart finesse would work but defenders have been known not to tell the truth sometimes! Place Q on the table, hold your breath and see if you won the trick!

Yes, you did. Wonderful. You can now take your remaining high diamond and A…3 tricks in each minor, 2 hearts and the A. Remember, if you had won the A at trick 1, the contract would have failed. On this occasion, 2 x would have been an excellent contract for the defence, at least 3 down, +800! If only. At least, South made their game contract…..

On this particular Friday, my partner said to me

 

4 missing kings

3 to finesse

                     

2 hold-up plays

1 contract made

And no way was this declarer going down!

Richard Solomon

Round 3 of Trans Tasman competion is tonight Friday at 8pm NZ time. With a 20 minute delay, there is a kibitzer link here   https://www.aj92.com.au/results/results.asp?yr=2024&dir=ttc

 

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