All News

Daily Bridge in New Zealand

for Junior, Intermediate and Novice players....and others. It's FriYay.png Day. 

A Difficult Deal.

Today’s deal is difficult for both sides. We will look at it through the eyes of North-South. It shows the value of good Hand Evaluation and then good play. The game is Pairs and overtricks are worth having though for a few North-South pairs, it was a case of trying to record a plus score where going down in one’s contract would have been a disaster.

Firstly, though, what bid would you make as South with this hand:

Bridge in NZ.png nz map.jpg  

     

East Deals
None Vul

 

N

W

 

E

S

   
 

A Q 9 8 3 2

Q 7 4 2

K 4 3

 

West

North

East

South

 

 

Pass

1 ♠

2 

2 ♠

3 

?

 

South may only have 11 hcps but their hand is worth much more than that because of its void and also because of its long trump suit. Where we have a side-suit void and trump agreement, we can add 5 points on thus making our hand worth at least 16hcp. We might only bid 3Spade-small but jumping to game would be a reasonable action. If we only bid 3Spade-small, we would rely on our opponents to compete to 4Diamond-small to allow us to bid to game.

At most tables, whether bid slowly or more quickly, the final contract was 4Spade-small though at a few tables, East-West bid to 5Diamond-small and South competed to 5Spade-small. Let’s look at the North-South hands:

East Deals
None Vul

K J 10 4

K 9 5 3

10 8 6

Q 2

   

N

W

 

E

S

   
 

A Q 9 8 3 2

Q 7 4 2

K 4 3

 

West

North

East

South

 

 

Pass

1 ♠

2 

2 ♠

3 

4 ♠

Pass

Pass

5 

5 ♠

All pass

 

 

 

We will see later that 5Diamond-small was a very good bid by East as that contract only fails by 1 trick. Meanwhile, in 5Spade-small, there is a certain club loser and Heart-smallA has to be lost. Our problem is not to lose 2 heart tricks. Looking at our heart pips, that looks tough but it is possible. It would be lovely if Heart-smallA was led at trick 1 but no such luck. West led Diamond-smallA.

We ruff and draw trumps in 2 rounds, West having 2. With a problem like this, we are best to lose what we have to lose and either the opposition will help us by playing a heart or we can possibly draw a conclusion as to which opponent holds the Heart-smallA. We will see why it is important to know that.

So, after drawing trumps, we lead a club towards dummy’s Club-smallQ. East takes that trick with their Club-smallA and alas plays Diamond-smallQ...still no help! Let’s stop and think. We know West overcalled. They hold Diamond-smallA and almost certainly Diamond-smallK. East has Diamond-smallQ and Club-smallA. West would need 10 hcp minimum to call 2Diamond-small. With no honours in spades and no more than Club-smallJ at most in clubs, they are strong favourites to hold Heart-smallA. How, knowing that, does that help us?

East Deals
None Vul

K J 10 4

K 9 5 3

10 8 6

Q 2

6 5

A 8

A K 9 3 2

10 9 7 6

 

N

W

 

E

S

 

7

J 10 6

Q J 7 5 4

A J 8 5

 

A Q 9 8 3 2

Q 7 4 2

K 4 3

 

West

North

East

South

 

 

Pass

1 ♠

2 

2 ♠

3 

4 ♠

Pass

Pass

5 

5 ♠

All pass

 

 

 

If the opponents will not play the heart suit, we will have to do so ourselves. There is just one lay-out of the heart suit that will enable us to play the suit for just one loser, the ace.

If West has Heart-smallA singleton, then we will lose a second trick in the suit to Heart-smallJ.

If West has 3 or 4 hearts, we are going to lose 2 tricks because if we lead a heart from the South hand, they will either play low on the first round or else play Heart-small10 if they hold Heart-smallAJT. We have to lose 2 heart tricks.

What though if West has Heart-smallA doubleton? Assuming we lead hearts from the South hand (if we play a low heart from dummy towards Heart-smallQ, West can win Heart-smallA), West must play low or else they automatically give us 3 heart tricks. So, the Heart-smallK wins the first trick on the dummy. Next we play a low heart from dummy and although East plays Heart-small10, we play a low heart from our hand, forcing West to play Heart-smallA.

Magic.png

Magic! Despite having really poor heart cards, we only lose one trick in the suit. It’s not magic: it’s good play because you worked out which opponent was likely to hold Heart-smallA and then took your only chance of making the contract.

You would take this line whether you were in 4Spade-small where it is just a case of scoring an overtrick or if you were in 5Spade-small where if you did not play for this lay-out, your contract would fail.

So, excellent if you played this way and bad luck to East-West who had pushed you all the way to an uncomfortable contract. In 5Diamond-small, West only loses one trick in each major suit and one club trick, as long as they take 2 finesses in that suit: an excellent sacrifice against a making 4Spade-small game. 

It’s not easy and 5Spade-small would seem to need some opposition help to make. Yet, that’s not so if you can work out which opponent is likely to hold Heart-smallA.

Richard Solomon

Go Back View All News Items

Our Sponsors
  • Tauranga City Council
  • TECT.jpg