Friday, August 7, 2009

A thief in the night

Suppose you are declarer in 1NT on deal #11 in the semifinal of the Spingold Knockout Teams from the just-concluded NABC in Washington DC (hands rotated):

K Q 5
A Q 8 6 4
Q 7 6
6 5
==
J 10 8
K J
K 10 9 5 4
10 8 7

After partner opened 1, you responded 1NT and played there. West leads the 6. You played low from dummy, East encouraged, and you won the jack.

Here are two lines of play:

1. Try to sneak a diamond or (another) spade through. Then play for hearts to be 3-3 and cash your seven tricks.

2. Unblock the hearts and lead a spade. If clubs split 4-4, or if the club suit blocks, you have seven tricks. It's also somewhat possible that the defense won't switch to clubs.

Polish star, Cezary Balicky, didn't try either of these. At trick two, he played the K, ducked all around. He continued with a low diamond to the queen. It held, as East played the J.

Balicky could see that he still didn't have seven tricks, unless hearts divided 3-3. Apparently, he didn't come all the way from Poland to play for that. At trick four, he advanced the 5, East played the 2, he played the 10 as West won his king.

West continued with the 2. East won her A and led a another round. Balicki won, but didn't play any more clubs. He had seven sure tricks now: two diamonds, two spades and (at least) three hearts.

Here are all four hands:

K Q 5
A Q 8 6 4
Q 7 6
6 5
7 6 3 2 A 9 4
10 7 3 9 5 2
A 3 2 J 8
A K 9 Q J 4 3 2
J 10 8
K J
K 10 9 5 4
10 8 7

1NT was set at the other table when declarer adopted line #2 suggested above. When east won her A, she shifted to a club and the defense took five clubs and two aces.

According to the BBO Vugraph, this was a 5-IMP pickup for the Lynch team. (Hearts did split and he made plus 150 versus minus 50 in the other room for a combined 200.)

You can see the hand record if you click here.

BBO Handviewer presentation:

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