SpadeHeart 
Chichester Bridge Club
 DiamondClub
0 0 0 0 0 0
Pages viewed in 2023
Trying to find the Minutes of our Meetings? Who is on the Committee? When and where does play start?

Press the information button above for the answer to all of these.

Release 2.19q
Monday Nov 25th - Board 6

I, Cliff as declarer, was asleep on this deal.

The bidding was
S    W    N    E 
1H   P   1S   P
2C   P   2H   all pass  

West has a difficult lead. If West leads the SA, then Declarer will surely make 9 tricks. A club lead looks wrong, and I would probably choose a trump. But West chose the best lead, the D2. The defence played 3 rounds of diamonds.

Declarer can see 8 tricks (5 trumps and 3 clubs) and 4 certain losers. So the whole play is about winning the 9th trick. (If clubs are 3-3 there is no problem, so Declarer thinks about how to handle a 4-2 distribution, with one defender holding CJxxx or C10xxx)

The obvious play for Declarer at trick 3 is to discard a spade, and leave the problem of what to do next to East. (The expectation would be for East to lead a spade, but East can tell that this will be a disaster, because Declarer will be able to ruff out the second top spade.)  East may well select a trump, but Declarer will have no problem in dropping the A & K of spades in normal play, while still having an entry to the SQ.

The CJ would be more of a problem, but Declarer would still establish the SQ.

Missing this obvious play, I ruffed high, drew trumps in 3 rounds and led a spade. West won the SA and returned the DK. Again, I missed the obvious play of discarding a spade. West would have to continue with a club, which would be won in Dummy. A spade ruffed with Declarer's last trump would drop the SK, but even if that did not happen, either hand holding 4 clubs and the SK would have been squeezed.