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Minor Danger!

The final round of this year’s Trans- Tasman Challenge took place last Friday evening and as throughout this Challenge competition, the Kiwi teams mainly came out on top though this round was spoilt by two teams, one from each country, unable to field teams. However, the Kiwis did not have it all their own way this time with only two wins in six matches. Overall, the Kiwis did come out on top: New Zealand 726.15   Australia 553.85.

These were the top 8 individual team standings:

	Round 8		B/FWD		Latest		Opponent		Current Score
					result
1		NZ Cornell	99.02		4.81		Aus Free		103.83
2		NZ Skipper	88.95		14.18		Aus Under 26 Women		103.13
3		NZ Livingston	85.18		17.03		Aus Tobin		102.21
4		Aus Seniors	90.08		10.00		no play		100.08
5		NZ Terry	89.98		10.00		no play		99.98
6		Aus Mixed	81.39		11.2		NZ Fisher		92.59
7		NZ Humphries	79.45		10.00		no play		89.45
8		NZ Carter	84.53		4.08		Aus Ewart		88.61

This board had the potential of catching declarers out and indeed there were some casualties:

 

East’s final bid in the above auction is questionable as opposite a partner who had no more than 2 cards in hearts and clubs combined, they may well have chosen 4. However, that contract was doomed. So, plan the play in 3NT on the inevitable heart lead, Q from South.

Assuming you can only lose the lead once before the defence take at least three heart tricks along with AK, barring a defensive mishap, you will have to look elsewhere for your source of tricks. Had West produced just one club, you could hope for a favourable break in that suit. Yet, with only one entry to the East hand (unless as did happen in one case that 10 scored the first round of the suit), clubs, too, was not the suit to play.

That left spades and that suit could only provide 4 tricks no matter where K was (a lack of entries to the East hand to repeat a successful finesse). With 2 heart tricks, that meant a declarer needed all three top clubs…and to cash them, they had the age-old problem of where to win trick one.

By now, one’s opponents might be getting frustrated at the wait. Yet, after much thought, trick one had to be taken in the East hand as otherwise communication back to the West hand would be too hard unless the defender with K could be persuaded to win in on the first round.

So, the sure way to 9 tricks was to winK (in the East hand) at trick 1 and cash AKQ discarding diamonds. Then it was down to the spade suit:

 

The defence were thus helpless. North could win either the first or third  (if they had ducked Q on the first round) round of spades and had to put declarer back in dummy to cash their remaining spade winners.

Had a declarer gone for diamond tricks, their only hope would have been a blockage in the heart suit which should not happen.

Meanwhile, North did not even have to lead a high diamond to defeat 4. As long as they took the first round of spades (assuming West finessed), they could then lay down top diamonds and give their partner a contract-beating ruff. Thus, what might have seemed a better choice of games had no chance of making. 

Thanks to Jo and Sam Simpson and David Fryda for organising this event on either side of the Tasman and to Matthew McManus for directing it.

Richard Solomon

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