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Dispensing with the safety barrier.

I have no head for heights, or to be exact sheer drops. If I am somewhere high, I like to feel there is a good strong safety barrier between me and the world down below.

In bridge terms, my safety barrier, in respect of playing trump contracts, is my trump suit. If use them up too soon, then like me when I panic about going “over the edge”, my contract will just spiral out of control. Hence, I was really worried when I played the following hand, with the path to success not being one I wanted to take.

 

 

5 spade and 5 diamond tricks would have added up to 10 tricks and a very straightforward contract. However, after ruffing the opening K lead, the declarer laid down two high spades. Both opponents followed suit but neither of them obliged by playing Q.

4 spade and 5 diamond tricks add up to 9 tricks. Where to find the 10^th? That is the question and West is more likely to hold A because of their overcall.

I abandoned the trump suit after the non-appearance of the queen and played a couple of rounds of diamonds feeling thoroughly disgruntled and unclear where I could find trick number 10. Then, I did something equivalent to a bungy jump without a harness (could there be anything worse? Doing one with a harness is bad enough!) by playing a club towards the king hoping East held the ace. My fear of using up my own trumps should have caused my contract to fail, all because I would not “waste” one of my own trumps by ruffing a heart.

Ruffing a second heart when in dummy seemed like just scoring one of the 9 tricks I had under my belt already. That was not true or the effect of doing so was much more significant. After 2 rounds of diamonds,finishing in dummy,  I should have ruffed a heart with these cards then remaining:

 

Back then to dummy with a third round of diamonds. It mattered not whether East ruffed any of the diamonds I would now play. Had they ruffed, East could play a club and I would lose two club tricks before being able to ruff the third round in dummy (my “hidden” 10^th trick) and still had a trump in the South hand to handle dummy’s remaining heart.

My imaginary fear (fear of sheer drops is far from imaginary!) was that after playing 5 rounds of diamonds (no Q ruff) that a defender would win a club, draw the remaining trump in both dummy and my hand and claim the rest of the tricks!

I still, though, had a safety barrier as clubs would not be played by me. I would play dummy’s last heart and ruff in the South hand…5 diamonds, 5 trump tricks including 3 from ruffing hearts. The defence were welcome to the other three but I had the first 10. No danger, safety all the way, no panic needed.  

Safe after all!

The four hands:

 

 

As you can see, when I played a club to the king, I was saved from “free-fall” by the fact that West did not have the Q but did hold AQJ. All West could do was help me out by playing a second heart…and I was on my way, safety barrier restored, to my 10 tricks.

I am not sure if the moral of this is to “live dangerously” or trust that the dangerous path can be quite safe after all. I will therefore be more inclined to take my sure trump tricks in future though harness or not, the world of bungy will be left for others!

What to bid?

 

2 was game-forcing. What now?

Richard Solomon

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