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Murat’s Finest Moment.

Thanks to Murat Genc for allowing me to reproduce this story. Murat was one of my teammates in the recent NZ Seniors’ Team in Buenos Aires. The story becomes much more real with names. His partner was Anne Somerville.

“It was my finest play of the trip” reflected Murat as the post mortem took place.

There are two stories to tell. I will leave it for you to decide to which Murat was referring. Well, maybe, I will give you a little clue! Put yourself in Murat’s shoes…well, his seat!

 

You may or may not like the bidding. 1 was Precision style “can be short”. Murat decided to try for no-trumps fearful of a ruff in a spade contract after the 1 overcall.

West ignored the overcall and led a rather annoying 10. Murat played low from dummy and 10 won the trick. Next came 9 from West and Murat had one of those challenging moments before he played K from dummy with East playing J. “First decision correct” Murat would have thought.  What is now your line of play to make 9 tricks…maybe even more though 9 would be very satisfactory!

While you are considering your line, watch this:

 

2 showed both majors, less than an opening hand. 2NT asked more and 3 said maximum with longer spades. Murat needed no further encouragement.

South obviously fancied their A and doubled. Murat had a surprise in that quarter. About half of the 28 tables bid grand- slam, not all in hearts! Only one other table saw 7 doubled and only Murat redoubled. South led their ace but there was no nasty surprise in suits breaking badly and Murat was soon recording +2940, a gain of 16 imps when small slam was bid at the other table.

Quite a nice result.

Back then to our play problem. Murat was not sure how badly the diamond suit was breaking. If the club and spade finesses were working (or maybe the Q was doubleton), he could count 9 tricks without touching hearts.

However, he felt East had no more diamonds and envisioned a lay-out something like this:

 

He would play a heart to 10 and then take a losing spade finesse. East would return a club. Murat could win, unblock AK and play K. East would be helpless in having to play a second club. Again, Murat plays a high club and can claim 9 tricks.

So, that is what he did...well, started to do.  He took K at trick 2 and played a small heart to 10. The East-hands were as above with one small difference:

Courtesy of East’s chronically light vulnerable overcall, West scored their J. West had 4 winning diamonds to cash and in the cascade of discards Murat had to find, he lost one trick more than he had to and finished down 5! All in the name of avoiding heart ruffs in 4. In fact, J lead against 4 does defeat this contract though, at the other table, when West led a club, 4 made and the combined loss was 15 imps. He had got so much right about the deal, except for one annoyingly placed jack. 

In the post-mortem, discussion was held about whether Murat could have played K first. East can take this and play a club. Declarer wins and loses a spade to East…and the contract will make. However, if East ducks K, South has to play 3 rounds of spades without taking a finesse to prevent West regaining the lead or East taking 3 heart tricks before declarer establishes their spade tricks. If he had played a club to the ace when K held, the defence would prevail.

3NT is a tough hand all round in that to defeat 3NT, East needs to win trick 1 with J and switch to a club. Eventually West will make 3 club tricks to go with diamond tricks and A.

So, Murat commented afterwards that he felt his best hand of the trip had been one in which he went 5 down in his game contract for a loss of 15 imps. I venture to disagree. Surely, bidding to 7xx is just as good. Let's call them "joint best".  

Richard Solomon

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