Hand of the day #242
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff The old-fashioned textbooks tell you to lead k...
This conundrum was written by Barbara Seagram's and was originally published in the book Barbara's Bridge Tips - you can find out all about it further down the page.
This quiz is about Declarer Play.
Question 1
West leads the ♠Q. Plan the play.
You have four losers — a spade, a heart and two clubs. Some time tomorrow, you might be able to set up dummy’s clubs, but the opponents will have their spade trick long before that happens. Is there a quick way to dispose of that spade loser?
Whenever you have uneven length suits with high cards, you have a chance to dispose of losers. Here you can use your diamond winners to dispose of one of dummy’s spades, then arrange to ruff a spade loser in dummy.
So win the first trick with the ♠A, play the ♦Q (high card from the short side first), and then a diamond to the ace. Then cash the ♦K, making the useful discard of a spade from dummy. Now play the ♠K and ruff that little spade. You have to do all this without playing trumps, as otherwise there’s a danger that dummy won’t have any trumps left to ruff the spade loser.
After disposing of the spade, you can finally start drawing trumps, and make your contract.
Question 2
West starts by cashing the ♦A and ♦K. East plays high-low to signal approval of the lead — since she doesn’t have an equal honor, she must have a doubleton. West obliges with a third diamond (the ♦3), which East trumps with the ♠4. East returns the ♣8.
You have lost three tricks and mustn’t lose any more. How do you play
the hand from here?
You started with two losing diamonds and one losing club. Now the opponents have scored a diamond ruff, so you can’t afford a club loser any more.
You have two basic choices when East leads a club now:
a) The finesse, on paper a 50-50 proposition. However, West opened the bidding, and must surely have the ♣K to get him up to enough points.
b) What about setting up dummy’s hearts? That works if hearts are 3-3 (36%) or 4-2 (48%) — that’s 84% of the time, a much better chance than the club finesse, which has to be close to zero.
So win Trick 4 with the ♣A and let’s set up those hearts. You can afford one round of trumps, so cash the ♠A now. Then play a heart to the ace, play the ♥K, and ruff a heart with a high trump as West discards a diamond. Notice that your trump suit is very good, so you can afford to ruff high — never send a boy to do a man's job! Cross over to the ♠10 (drawing a second round of trumps as you go) and ruff another heart high.
The long heart in dummy is now good! (Hope you were watching the cards they played and knew that.) But your work isn’t done yet. Cross to dummy with the ♠J, drawing the last trump at the same time. Now you’re in dummy to use that beautiful established heart to discard your losing ♣Q.
Nicely done!
Question 3 (Advanced)
West leads the ♦K. East overtakes with the ace and continues the suit. West wins and plays a third diamond. How do you play from here?
West opened 2♦, so he started with six diamonds and East only two. Dummy’s trumps are as low as they could be, so East surely can overruff dummy.
If you ruff the third diamond in dummy, that’s exactly what will happen; you will have lost three tricks and still be looking at an inevitable club loser. Is there any way around this?
Yes, there is. Instead of ruffing the third diamond in dummy, just throw your losing club instead! This is called a loser-on-loser play. If West plays yet another diamond, you can ruff this one in hand. You’ll be able to ruff a club loser in dummy, draw trumps and claim.
Simple!
Whether you have been playing for a while or you're not very experienced, this book will help you to move your game up to the next level. The tips cover all aspects of bridge - bidding, play and defense. Advice and examples are drawn from material Barbara Seagram has developed for her students over the last twenty years - it's like having your own personal bridge coach sitting beside you!
