Survive and advance

Above: The Sheraton Centre Toronto has this terrific view from its lobby. The Sheraton (along with the Royal York) is one of the two venues for the North American Bridge Championship.

Our team is in the top bracket of the Knockouts and we won both matches yesterday. The second match was against a Scottish team captained by bridge blogger Paul Gipson. He has a very worthwhile blog and you can read it if you click here.

The match against the Scots was hard-fought. Do you think this is a good slam (hands rotated and low cards are approximate)?

                  ♠ K 9

                  ♥ A 9 7 5 2

                  ♦ J 4 3

                  ♣ K J 6

==

                  ♠ A 10 4 3

                  ♥ K Q J 4 3

                  ♦ 2

                  ♣ A 3 2

          North (MOJO)   South (Rich)

                         1♥

          2NT            3♦

          3♥            3♠

          4♣            5♣

          6♥            Pass

The opening lead was the ♦A. Rich ruffed the diamond continuation, drew trumps in two rounds and played ♠K, ♠A and ruffed a spade. When the ♠Q J x ruffed out, the ♠10 was his 12th trick and 11 IMPs for our side.

If nothing good had happened in spades, Rich could finesse the club. Also, If his left-hand opponent held the spade guard, he might have some kind of a squeeze where he could drop a doubleton ♣Q offside. Not likely, I'm just sayin'.

There are four teams left and this afternoon we play another blogger! We drew Jeff Miller and his team.

Image by MOJO and taken with my P&S.