BBOers Festival Hands

Explore these hands from past BBOers Festival tournaments. Think about your play and then click reveal to see how the previous festival winners played it.

Hand 1

You play 4♠, West led the 4. How would you plan the play?


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Here's the hand played by Jingsong Liu (BBO: zilon) in November's Stars & Platinum Robot Individual. Let's see how he played the hand:

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"The auction and opening lead provided a wealth of information, revealing the West hand to be likely 4-1-4-4 or 3-1-4-5. After West won the trump at trick two and returned a trump, with East confirming a singleton, the scenario turned double-dummy, allowing the declarer to set up clubs to maximize the number of tricks." - Jingsong Liu

Hand 2

You play 3NT, West led 9, how would you plan the play?


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Here's a hand played by Kevin Lane (BBO: geokevin), in March's Stars and Platinum Robot Individual. Let's see how he played the hand:

Click 'NEXT' to see the complete play

"After trick 3, I have two Heart winners once I set them up and potential tricks in the Club suit with at least 1 loser.

The bidding tells me nothing about who has the ♣K; RHO likely has 3-4 cards of Spades, so 4-5 cards of minor suit. I played a low Heart at trick 4. If I get two Hearts, then I'd only need one extra minor suit trick to make my contract. But when RHO ducked the Heart, then I can't afford to play more Hearts. So I cashed the ace of clubs - in case RHO dropped a stiff honor - returned to hand with a Diamond and played a Club towards the ♣Q. Here, I got lucky. LHO played the Jack of clubs for unclear reasons.

Now I have 10 tricks when RHO played a Spade instead of cashing out the A." - Kevin Lane

Hand 3

You play 3NT, West led Q, how would you plan the play?


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Here's a hand played by Jim Munday (BBO: jmunday) in January's Stars & Platinum Robot Individual. Let's see how he played the hand:

Click 'NEXT' to see the complete play

"I won the first heart to prevent a damaging club shift and to disguise the position from East. I naturally started on diamonds, taking special note of the opposing diamonds (7, 9). GIB signals count here so the layout had to be Q743 - 109 or 10743 - Q9. The robot might have played the 10 from 109 and the A will present me with at least 4 tricks as long as the 10 or Q fell (if RHO held 109 the J8 would remain as equals to West's Q4) so I rose with the K on the 2nd round and was pleased to see the Queen fall.

Continuing diamonds would only develop 1 additional trick and put West on lead so I decided to go after hearts leading to the 9, which held.

I then led a spade to the ♠J, the most fluid way to attack the suit and if it lost, East wouldn't be able to hurt me. This won, and on the ♠K, East pitched a club. This was illuminating as East was known to be 1-5-2-5 distribution and almost certainly held the ♣K for the overcall. If that was the case, I could exit with the ♣Q and the defense would be stymied. If East ducked, I could simply set up a long diamond.

When East won the ♣K they had two losing options. Cash the K, which would set up my jack and rectify the count for a squeeze against West (in spades/diamonds, not knowing the ♣J is falling I needed 1 more trick). A club return does no better as I can win the club and endplay West in diamonds to lead spades.

Sort of a complex hand but using the GIB tendencies as a guide, one trick at a time, it fell into place. This scored very well and got me into a great rhythm for the session." - Jim Munday

Hand 4

You play 3NT, West led 8, how would you plan the play?

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Here's a hand played by Robert Brady (BBO: bradybot) in the 3-Day Mini Survivors. Let's see how he played the hand:

Click 'NEXT' to see the complete play

"The auction on this one was quite normal, reaching 3NT after East overcalled in diamonds.

After two rounds of diamonds, two rounds of hearts (unblocking dummy's honors), and a spade back to my hand, East dropped the J which made me worry the suit was not going to bring home the 5 tricks necessary to make 12 tricks in total.

But from here, knowing East had the rest of the diamonds and West had the rest of the spades, when I ran my hearts both opponents were squeezed in clubs as well as their respective spade/diamond suits. First West had to keep all the spades and came down to a singleton club, then when I ran the spades in dummy, East had to keep the diamond jack and also had to come down to a singleton club.

This non-simultaneous double squeeze was enough for 12 tricks and earned me 85.7% of the matchpoints on this board." - Rob Brady

Interested to challenge yourself with more hands like these? Join the next BBOers Festival on January 1-3. Who knows, maybe you'll be the next to share your winning strategy!

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