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Jack James.

Ending on top.

The Auckland- Northland Main Regional Teams was played in Whangarei last Sunday and was won by the team of Malcolm Mayer – Pam Livingston and Michael Ware – Jack James. They were in no small way helped by Jack’s play in the following 3NT contract:

 

Jack, South, opened an 11-14 1NT. 2NT asked about majors with 3 denying a 5-card major. West led 5. What do you play to trick 1? Plan the play from then on.

On a good day, you can make two tricks in each major and three in each minor though the only certainty about that is your three diamond tricks.

Jack made an important guess at trick 1 by inserting 9 from the dummy hand. If the lead was 4^th highest, East held two hearts higher than the 5 and a wrong guess would have endangered the second heart trick.

These were the four hands:

 

As you can see, that optimistic three club tricks was not going to happen. Even 2 looked unlikely which meant that Jack would need an extra trick from a major suit to even come to 9, let alone 10 tricks.

9 drew K and Jack’s A. He played a low diamond to the K in dummy and then a club to his K and West’s A. West exited 10 with Jack again guessing well to play J.

Next came a diamond to J in hand and a club to 10, losing to East’s J. East exited a third round of diamonds with A winning this trick. These cards remained, with Jack needing 4 of the remaining 6 tricks:

Jack played his remaining club to the Q but there was no good news there. He then cashed a top spade before exiting 5 to East. East could cash their 10 but then had to exit 10 with the J and the K taking the last 2 tricks.

He had made 3 spade tricks, 2 hearts, 3 diamonds and just one club trick. That adds to 9. It would not have helped the defence if West had cashed Q when in with A. East would have had to throw their winning diamond to preserve their holding in both black suits…and the ending would have been the same.

A nice end-play which saw Jack’s team end as victors by 5.03 vps. All 24 North-Souths tried to make 3NT but only 8 were successful, 6 failing by two tricks.

Richard Solomon

Round 5 of the Trans Tasman Teams Challenge takes place tomorrow evening, 8pm NZ time. There will be delayed kibitzer coverage (30mins)  with the link provided tomorrow. 

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