Bridge Players,

There were 29 responses to question 11: 4 to 11a (1 completely correct), 1 to 11b (0 completely correct), 5 to 11c (1 completely correct), and 19 to 11d (2 completely correct). The solutions appear in 4 emails, each with the problem number listed as subject.

I get fewer responses whenever we have a play-of-the-hand problem. I suspect that the main reason is that the answers frequently require quite a bit of detail, and some of you just do not want to spend all that much time crafting a response. This is fine; I understand. However, others enjoy responding to the declarer play hands, and some of the non-responders probably find them an interesting challenge. So I will continue to put one out every fourth question.

Some contest participants are depriving themselves of the partial credit that is available on these declarer play questions. Whenever there is a possibility of the defenders winning a trick, your response has to include what you would do as declarer in case they win the trick and in case they do not as well. Except in deals where it is a virtual certainty that the defense has a particular card, you cannot just assume, for example, that a finesse will win (or lose). Explain your plan in either eventuality.

I conjecture that it takes you a while to determine how to play a hand and how to write up your solution, but I know that it takes me a lot of time to read and grade all the responses. In order to save myself extra work I tried to be very clear in problem 11 that you should submit a solution to exactly one of 11a, 11b, 11c, and 11d. Unfortunately several responders did submit multiple answers, but despite my initial inclination to assign those players the 0 score that was promised, I decided to grade just the highest point question they answered.

Craig