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A “BLOOMING” GOOD PLAY

When you are playing against Sydney’s Peter Gill, the best place to have him is in the dummy seat. He cannot exert nearly as much influence on the result of a board or match as he can in any other position.

If I had any great hopes that the following 5 contract from the Round of 8 of The New Zealand Teams could be defeated because Peter was not declarer, his partner, Martin Bloom, soon dispelled them.

 

 

Martin and Peter crawled their way to 5 after West’s weak jump overcall. Assuming the spade finesse is going to fail, how are you going to avoid losing two heart tricks and one in spades?

Martin, South, won the trump lead in hand and played a club to the ace and ruffed a club. Next came a trump to dummy (they broke 2-2) and a second club ruff. The A (West played the jack) was followed by the A with these cards then remaining:

 

Martin played Q knowing that West was down to five spade cards and one other. If that other card was a heart, West could cash that heart but would then have to either play a high spade which would promote his 10 as a trick (heart discard) or else exit a lower spade on which Martin could throw the losing heart as his 10 would score. It would not have helped West to unblock the K as if East overtakes with the queen, the defence would have condensed two heart tricks into one while if East ducked the J, Martin’s end-play works as above. The full hands were:

 

True, the heart lay favoured Martin but there is no point having a favourable lay-out if you do not take advantage of it.

At the end of the board, dummy was heard to say quietly “Well played”. Well earnt praise.

Richard Solomon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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