In their latest outing on the cafe Bridge circuit Dominic and Pamela narrowly missed out at the Clapham event run by the LMBA. Having lead from round 3 they had a 5% cushion going into the penultimate round but after 3 boards in round 7 they found themselves demoted to 3rd position and a 4 % deficit. Ouch! Something must have happened with the leaders because with 2 boards to play the lead was down to 1.5% A top on the next board would be enough to regain the lead, and here came the opportunity.

In the event 3NT was passed but this wasn’t the end of the story because if declarer brings home a twelfth trick it would be enough to garner the match points required.  Receiving a lead of KH, not unreasonable, the standard technique when you are a trick short is to duck a trick to rectify the count to set up a possible squeeze..

On closer examination although North is under pressure declarer hasn’t got the communications to succeed.

In fact the solution is even more elegant. Declarer must win the first trick and unblock the diamonds. Now when the clubs are run North has to release a two spades. After the clubs are cashed,  declarer cashes two spades and North has to surrender. Either North must release a diamond in which case declarer cashes  two diamonds and gives up a heart. If North releases a heart then he is thrwn in and has to lead away from his two remaining diamonds into dummy’s K10 tenace.

Despite a few teething problems, most notably an effort to torpedo the evening by Nicole Coke who decided not to deal any boards, the opening night ran to plan. Unlike a cross ruff where there is no plan 'B' the chairman had suspected some skulduggery and so executed a carefuly prepared back up plan. The format of the evening was pivot teams, but unfortunatley it was pretty onesided because one team was made up of four players who were either regular or semi-regular partnerships, so I am going to have to give some thought to this format, and possibily the best way forward is to give each team the option to pivot or not.

One of my great skills is to find a bug in software if it exists, and I did so with consumate ease by changing the scoring system from aggregate scoring to imp midway through the event. So the hands are not avaialble on Benedicts web site but you will find them on the RAC web site as I used the hands from the duplicate held on the 10th September.

Here is a hand from the first stanza where we bid correctly and then messed up the defence.  This was hand 3 where we correctly competed up to 5♦ but then I woodenly lead the A♦ It is obvious that you are unlikely to score more than 1♦ and therefore to break the contract you need a trump trick via a club ruff in addition to the two aces.  The only legitimate entry to your partner's hand is a low diamond. Simple really, just a case of not being too hasty over ther first trick.