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Good Defence: Bad Luck

If there was voting for the “Good Defence” and “Bad Luck” categories at the end of a year’s bridge at Akarana, then I would have a couple of nominations from this week’s play.

Firstly, to the good defence and in the spotlight is George Sun and David Dolbel:

 

George’s partner, William Liu led A and a second diamond, ruffed by the declarer who played a club to the ace (George would have been disappointed at the lack of a finesse) and then dummy’s lone spade. George was ready, no hesitation and no ace. He was rewarded when this was the full lay-out:

 

Declarer, who with limited ruffing and even less high card strength, needed something good to happen in the spade suit. On the first round of spades, West played the J losing to the queen. William played a third diamond, again ruffed by West who advanced 10 and discarded a club from dummy losing to George’s ace. There was no route home now as George exited a fourth diamond..and William’s trump trick defeated the contract.

Once West had misguessed spades, he could not set up dummy’s clubs and enjoy them before drawing trumps and was short of entries to his own hand to set up spades…and had George gone up with A, he would almost certainly have been entering -420 into the bridgemate.

The same duck of the A was found at the other table by David Dolbel, thus tieing the board.

What would you choose as the final contract with the following hand if you knew that your partner had an unbalanced hand with reversing values, after your sequence started:

                        Partner                      You

                        1                              1

                        2

and you held:

 AK84

 5

KJ4

K9753

You can check for key cards in clubs and find your partner has three but no Q.  Does that card’s absence matter? Surely not as most of the time your partner has 5+ clubs or even if only 4 (1444 style), the queen will make a quick appearance.

Alas, finding that queen proved too hard for Matt Brown after Michael Whibley bid the club grand:

 

 

That was 14 imps in the out column when their opponents stopped in 6. I am not aware that Michael or Matthew won Lotto last night either!

Richard Solomon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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