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Breaking those Rules.

That’s part of the beauty of Bridge. We create rules (or guidelines) and then we break them! Of course, sometimes, maybe most of the time, we should not but recognising the times when we should is the mark of good players. Rumour has it that Matt Brown and Michael Whibley fall into that description. Let’s see:

 

1NT is 12-14 and the rest is what you would expect with 3 fishing for the best place to play the board.

4 was led by West (3rds and 5ths). You cash your two club winners with South playing 8 and 10. West played 4 and then 3 indicating an even number of clubs. What now?

In view of South’s reluctance to even offer 3NT as an option, it would appear that West is the player with four clubs. South would hardly squander their 10 if they did hold 4 clubs. So, where to for defensive tricks?

The declaring side seem to have lots of high-card points, especially ignoring clubs. Their one point of potential weakness could well be in the trump suit, with North only having three. Michael Whibley, sitting East decided to try and expose that weakness:

 

This deal was nominated for the best defended hand of 2020 though did not win the ultimate award. It actually featured four New Zealand players and occurred in the Gold Coast Congress Teams. North was Michael Ware, South Nick Jacob with Matt Brown West and Michael Whibley East.

The nomination commented as follows:

“Whibley-Brown’s team was 30 imps in arrears with just three boards to play in the final but outscored their opponents 42-0 in those three boards to win by 12 imps.

Had Michael Ware just bid 3NT over his partner’s opening bid, Nick Jacob might have made his contract against less than stellar defence, perhaps being able to score one diamond trick before West became aware of his partner’s powerful club suit.

However, Michael avoided the 3NT trap when it became obvious that his partner did not have a club hold.

After the second round of clubs scored, Michael Whibley (East) tried a third round of clubs. Nick discarded a diamond from hand and ruffed low in dummy. He needed a diamond trick to come to 10 tricks and therefore played a diamond to the king and Matt Brown’s ace.

Matt continued his partner’s good work and played a fourth round of clubs. With a 4-2 spade break, it did not matter where Nick ruffed. Either 10 would be promoted if Nick ruffed in dummy or else Matt would have to make a spade if Nick ruffed in hand.

While a different initial lead would defeat the contract and the contract might be defeated if East switches to a diamond after cashing the two club tricks (West has to duck one round…and then the contract can still be made by declarer cashing dummy’s AK before playing on diamonds thus denying East a diamond ruff), the double ruff and discard was a certain way to defeat the contract after the normal lead indicated by the bidding.”

So, we are told not to give a declarer a ruff and discard as they can normally discard a loser as a result. However, when there are no losers to discard and potentially a trump shortage for the declarer, then this technique works rather well.

Beware, though, before you rush to try this out next time you are defending. It is the exception which proves the rule!

 

Promising cards?

 

Pairs All Vul.

A promising couple of bids from partner… but how promising? How aggressive do you want to be?

Richard Solomon

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