Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Too easy


Richard and I played this deal against Cindy and Mark, two friends from Memphis. It was from the second session of the North American Pairs district final held last Sunday at Sam's Town Casino (Sam's Town atrium shown above):

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

Richard, South, opened 1 and I raised to 2. Richard rebid 3, a help-suit game try that is often a three-card suit. What would you do with my hand? I accepted, of course, with a strong heart holding, but I bid 4 instead of the lazy 4 bid.

Now Richard had a problem. He knew I had nothing to cuebid. Finally, he decided that we had found a better fit than some would, so we were ahead of the field -- he passed. As it turns out, it's a five or seven hand as long as the major suits split.

Mark led a low diamond, the most effective defense, and Richard won Cindy's honor with the ace. He played a high trump, unblocked the A, then led a low heart to dummy's king.

Declarer discarded a diamond on my K, then took the spade finesse. That won, so he led a third trump to my Q to repeat the spade finesse. When that also won, and the suit split, he discarded dummy's diamonds and made seven via: five spade tricks, five heart tricks, two clubs and one diamond.

Surprisingly, plus 510 was a complete top. There was one plus 490, and the rest were 480s. Too bad they can't all be this easy.

Image by MOJO and taken with my point-and-shoot.

5 comments:

  1. So, again you won some money. You could, theoretically therefore, go from Sam's Town to Sam's Club ... and spend that money.

    Is Sam's Town related to Sam's Club?

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  2. Nice shot of the atrium. Happily, the fake flowers were out of sight. :)

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  3. Nice.

    Unbelievable that that was a top.

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Jacob: No relation, although it sounds like it might be.

    @Warren: Thanks for the comment.

    For those who don't know, poker and all the other things jusdealem is into, isn't enough. She has decided to take photography more seriously, and has started a new photo blog. She has shown she has a good eye, so if interested, you can see it here.

    ReplyDelete