Bridge By The Lake

By Ken Masson

juegos de cartas

 

Fifty years ago the Beatles told us they could get by with a little help from their friends. The same philosophy sometimes applies when you are declaring a tricky bridge contract and you can’t manufacture enough tricks - you can call upon your opponents (your new friends!) to help you out. A good example was the illustrated deal which was played at the Lake Chapala Duplicate Bridge Club in Riberas.

South opened the bidding 1 heart, West passed and North bid Jacoby 2 NT, a conventional call showing four or more hearts and at least game going values. South bid game in hearts, showing a minimum opening bid with no singleton or void, and all passed.

The queen of spades was led and South counted his losers: three diamonds and one club. Something had to be done to condense these four losers into three.

Declarer saw that if he could get the opponents to open up the diamond suit there would only be two losers there, so he set about an elimination play. Winning the opening lead in hand, declarer drew trumps in three rounds, played his seven of spades to dummy’s king, ruffed dummy’s last spade in hand and played the ace, king and a third round of clubs, allowing the defence to earn its first trick.

It didn’t matter which defender won the club trick - that defender would be end played and would have to lead diamonds, or lead another suit and give declarer a ruff and sluff. In either event declarer was sure to make the required ten tricks.

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bridge january2019

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