A lot of hands are routine but here is a hand from last night's BR v Derby B match that required a special effort:

Deal: 27             82 KQ96 764 K632

    A7 AT85 Q53 AQJ9                  KQT93 J KT8 T754

                     J654 7432 AJ92 8

South was dealer and 3NT was quickly reached by West.
On a diamond from N, 3NT has no chance. But N naturally led a heart. Fortunately our methods suggest the Queen and this
is what Mary led but declarer could now have made his contract. If he wins and plays clubs, South is very inconvenienced.
 He must keep spades and has to find 3 discards. When N decides to take the King of clubs, only a diamond switch is sensible.
 West should rise with the king and when S takes the ace and switches to a heart, should also rise with the ace and end play S with a diamond. 
By now S will be forced down to spades only. Double dummy or not?
PS 3NT is cold played by East on a similar line of play but without the deadly diamond start from North, the defence are helpless.

David Marshall

Waddington League? What's that, DCBA members may ask?

The Waddington Leagues are run by Sheffield Bridge Club for teams of four during the winter months. They are open to all members of the EBU, although most players are from the Sheffield area with the odd player from Chesterfield and even Derby! Each division usually has 7 teams and there is a system of promotion and relegation.

There was an interesting hand in a match on Monday, where there was some confusion when a defender asked questions of declarer and dummy and misjudged the defence from possibly wooley explanations.

The defender's comments and justification for his actions are shown below. If you would like to know who was involved, please contact Ron.

“I was playing against 2 people I like and respect very much. By the time we had got to Board 2 it was clear they had somewhat different views about what they had agreed!! This is of course much more difficult to handle than the situation where  nothing has been discussed.

Shropshire v Derbyshire, 13Sep2009 (touch above County Matches link for details)

Board 31 - keep going to the end for an unusual squeeze

             J964
             J53
             K10953
             9
52                  AKQ1083
96                  K
Q872             AJ64
AJ1065         74
              7
              AQ108742
              -
              KQ832

Those who played in Hearts made anything from 8 to 11 tricks, the best defence (a Heart Lead) holding it to 9 tricks.
Those who bid 4 Spades all went off.
It can always be made if East decides to finesse the 10 Spades.This in itself is a reasonable play after South will have shown lots of hearts and clubs.
But under certain circumstances, it can still be made without it by means of a very unusual series of plays.

Against Jim Tomlinson, South made the reasonable lead of the K Clubs.

Jim won and deciding not to finesse, he played the Ace and King of Spades, discovering the bad news.

He now switched back to a club which South won, helpfully returning another for North to ruff, Jim over-ruffing.

Jim now drew North's last trump, reaching this position:

        -
        Jxx                    He is going to win his 6 Spades, the Ace Clubs and at least 2 Diamonds
        K1095             If the diamonds break, he will make another Diamond
        -                        Or if the King Diamonds is with South, he will be able to get to the J Clubs
-                   103      However, with South showing so many Hearts and Clubs, this is very unlikely
9                  K
Q872          AJ64     So, one way to overcome the problem of North having the King is to play the J Diamonds
J6               -             Whoever wins, leaves the Q Diamonds as an entry for the winning Club
         -
         AQ1087          But North can hold off playing the King and East is sort of scuppered!!
         -
         83          

However, all is not yet lost. East now plays the 10 Spades, throwing the 9 Hearts from dummy.
North is now Squeezed!!
If he throws a diamond, East makes a fourth diamond.
Now for the interesting bit: If he throws a heart, East gets off lead with the King Hearts, throwing his 6 clubs from dummy.
South has to return another heart, and declarer pitches the winning J Clubs from dummy to keep all his diamonds
East ruffs and now throws North in with a low diamond to lead away from his King!!

Of course, if South doesn't lead a club after winning his Q, and gets off lead with Ace and another Heart, then this end play wouldn't be available - but that could easily be wrong if East had Kx.

Dealer: South
Vul:    LA

Playing in a team of four match against good players, as Dealer you pick up:

S K106
H A987
D Q6
C A842

With the opponents silent throughout, you open a 12-14 1NT and rebid 2H after your partner's non promissory 2C Stayman response.
He now bids 2NT, invitational, denying a 4 card major. With your good looking 13 pts, you bid 3NT.
Partner puts down a hand which is up to strength for some of his invitations!!

S Q93
H Q3
D J1098
C KQ65

S K106
H A987
D Q6
C A842

Prospects are not good; only 4 top tricks and a lot of work to generate more.
Things improve, however, when West, after some thought, leads the 4 of Diamonds.
East thinks for even longer, wins the Ace and switches to the 4 of Hearts.
Suddenly there is hope! You naturally play low, West wins the King of Hearts and returns the 2.
Now you have 2 heart tricks, 4 club tricks, if they break 3-2, 2 Diamond tricks once the King is knocked out and a 'sure' Spade trick for nine in total.
Unfortunately, when you play either spades or diamonds, the winner will play a heart, setting up a second trick in the suit.
So before you can set up the 9th trick, they will claim 2 Diamonds, 2 Hearts and a Spade.
Not all is lost! If you choose to play the correct suit, the winning opponent might have the the fourth heart and not able to get it when his partner wins the other.
So - which should you tackle first? Spades or Diamonds?
It is tempting to play on clubs before you make up your mind, but on this occasion, all that will do is tell EW where the Ace of Clubs is and also make your own communication difficult.
On the lead, West almost certainly has the King of Diamonds and has shown up with the King of hearts. This probably suggests he doesn't have the Ace Spades.
Who has the 4th heart? It is very difficult to tell from the way cards have been played. Since the honours are likely to be split, East's low switch could have been from 3 or 4 or even 5.
West returning the 2 could suggest 2 or 4 or even 3 if he has K103 or KJ3.
His long think before his initial lead, might have been because he had the hearts which I have already bid.
If he has the hearts, I have to lead a diamond now, if not I have to lead a Spade.
Unfortunately, I thought a bit more. Why hasn't he led a Spade? It could be that he has 5 Diamonds, therefore less likely to have 4 hearts.
So I led Spade trying to pinch a trick before knocking out the diamond! Unfortunately the hand was as follows, and down I went:

         S Q93
         H Q3
         D J1098
         C KQ65
S J852            S A74      
H K1062           H J54
D K54             D A732
C 109             C J73
         S K106
         H A987
         D Q6
         C A842

If I hadn't thought so much and led a diamond first, 9 tricks were there.
Perhaps, it is just as well.
If I had made it, partner would have been able to justify his dodgy bidding.

A plague on aggressive partners!

If you have any comments, please email me on ronald@caledoniancomputers.com

S  AKJ

H A4

D KJ75

C A543

This hand came up in last night's Vic Morris. I was playing Acol 12 - 14 and my parner opened 1NT. Not having discussed any finer points of system, I simply bid 4NT, which my parner passed. Before I bid 4NT, I regretted not having some way about asking for 4 card minors. Andy Wells and myself had a method of responding 2D with no minor and 2NT with at least one, but this meant that 2C (Stayman) always had to be constructive at least. Needless to say 6C would have been easy but NT only produced 11 tricks. At the other table they  bid 6NT and made it on a misdefence (no justice!). I believe my method works well. Any ideas? At the moment you'll have to e-mail me but Ron hopes to introduce a method for people to blog back suggestions to the site.

david@dcmarshall.freeserve.co.uk

This time there is a degree of irony in the title. If I gave this hand to my beginners, after a session on planning declarer play, I would expect them to tease out the correct answer. Unfortunately I am not a beginner and tend to be a bit lazy in the planning. This hand contains a trap for the unwary and I fell into it.

Questions

1. How should you bid this?

2. What is your plan to a make four spades, when N leads the 9 of spades?

3. What do you think was my mistake (it has something to do with safety plays)?

Answers

1. 1S -2S - 3C - 4S, seems reasonable to me. I prefer to open the major when I am 4-4 like this and am definitely worth a try over 2S (6 losers). The East hand, though it has 9 losers is probably worth a raise due to the power of the two aces.

2. You have 6 possible losers and that's assuming a 3-2 spade break: a spade, a heart, a diamond and three clubs. A diamond can be ruffed but the club finesse must work or there is no chance. That still leaves one more loser to contend with, therefore your fourth club must be ruffed. You need to win in dummy and take the club finesse, cash the ace and then conceed a club to ensure your club ruff later(or 3-3 break). This requires the hand with 2 clubs to hold 3 spades.

3.The trap is the club suit itself. The 'safe' way to play clubs is cash the ace and then lead to the queen. So I won the first spade in hand, cashed the ace of clubs, went to dummy with a winning trump and led a club. Smack! East won her king and smartly cashed her trump, leaving me with a minor suit loser which had nowhere to go. Had I bothered to plan the hand properly I would have made four spades, when the rest of the room was going off in three no trumps.

David Marshall

Excuse the title but it is not often that you come across a hand with so many instructive points in it. I will give you the hand first, South the dealer and no opposition bidding; then follows the inevitable series of questions. Have a go at answering them before peeking at my answers.

                            N KQ5

                            H 7543

                            D 953

                            C K109

                           S A762

                           H AQ62

                           D Q7

                           C AQ5

1.  How should you bid this?

2. Assuming you play in three no trumps and get the four of clubs lead, how should you play to the first trick (East cannot beat the 9?.

3. How should you play hearts?

4. Assuming that you've played hearts correctly and found some bad news, what should you do next? (K of hearts drops under your ace)

5. What chances are there if spades do not break? (Adjunct to Q4)

My answers

1. I opened 1H, following the rule about 4-4 in the majors. Partner bid 2H (9 losers). I tried 2NT and partner correctly raised to 3NT.

2. Play low from dummy and when the 9 wins, play your Q. You want to create the impression of having AQ only.

3. Cash the Ace of hearts before tackling hearts.

4. When the hearts misbehave do not just cash spades and hope. Play a spade to dummy and lead a diamond.

5. You are hoping that the opponents will be misdirected into continuing clubs, so that you might eventually exert some pressure on the hand that holds 4-4 in the majors. In fact East was 4-4-4-1 with the AK of diamonds and ducked when I led a diamond, so that my Queen won. I played another diamond and after East cashed two more and exited with a heart found itself squeezed in the majors for an over-trick

At teams scoring, matches are usually won by the side which bids and makes more 'dodgy' games.
Some theorists suggests that over a 32 board match, games should be attempted where the chance of making is only 40% or even 35% vulnerable.
Of course, this assumes that your team's declarer play is sound and that the opposition defence is often going to find the wrong opening lead or else make a wrong decision later.
However, this does not mean that part scores are unimportant.
Overtricks are not particularly important, but every attempt should be made by the defending side to beat a part score contract.
Defeating a 1NT contract, e.g., is often worth at least 4 IMPs.
Each defender must try to work out what partner has to have to beat the contract and then play accordingly.
Here is one significant part score hand in Derbyshire's county match versus Lincolnshire.

Board 12: Dealer East, NS Vulnerable (positions switched for layout purposes),
Derbyshire's West holds :

S: Q8432
H: A42
D: 643
C: AQ

East deals and passes, South then opens with a vulnerable 12-14 1NT. Even though non-vulnerable, West reluctantly passes and 1NT becomes the final contract. EW are playing 4th and 2nd leads, so West starts off with the 3 of Spades. Dummy goes down with:

                   S: A96
                   H: J85
                   D: Q1087
                   C: J108
S: Q8432
H: A42
D: 643
C: AQ

Declarer plays the 6S, East the Jack and declarer wins with the King.
South now plays a low diamond to the 10, East following with the 2.
Declarer now plays the 5H from dummy, East the 6H (possibly suggesting an odd number of cards) and declarer plays the King.
What's going on? What does West do now?
Since East played the JS and not the 10, South must have it and is going to make 3 tricks in spades.
If he had the AK diamonds, then he would have been able to make 4 diamonds as well, making 7 in total.
So why is he playing on hearts?
East must have held off in Diamonds, presumably with the Ace!
Why didn't he win and play a club, or even return a spade?
If West wins the heart and returns a spade, declarer will now make 3 spades, 1 Diamond and probably 3 Hearts.
So the only hope is that partner has a string of clubs to the King and the Ace of Diamonds as his only entry and has correctly ducked knowing that the Clubs must be blocked!
West must win the Ace hearts, go against natural instincts, and play the AQ clubs and put partner in with his Ace diamonds to run his clubs.

If West does this, EW gain + 200 as opposed to -150: a swing of 8 IMPs!!

Defending part scores well is as important as bidding and making 40% games!

The full hand was:
                    S: A96
                    H: J85
                    D: Q1087
                    C: J108
S: Q8432                      S:J5  
H: A42                           H:1063
D: 643                           D:A2
C: AQ                            C:K97653
                    S:K107
                    H:KQ87
                    D:KJ95
                    C:42

Other points of interest:
- East would have liked to have opened a weak 2C, but couldn't playing Acol. Some adventurous, ill disciplined Derbyshire players have been known to open 3C on such hands.
- South took a signficant risk bidding 1NT vulnerable with such a poor hand, but on this occasion got away with it!
- East couldn't protect with a natural 2C since he was play Apstro.
- There is a 4th in hand defence to 1NT where a Double shows a competitive hand with a long minor.
- This would have worked out well here, since West would have left it in and got a nice 500 penalty.
- From the play point of view, South could perhaps have improved his chances by playing the Q Diamonds rather than the 10. It is much more difficult for East to duck that smoothly .

I've had many requests for more 'DCBA Based Interesting Hands'. So here goes:

Every now and then one turns up which has lots of devious twists.
This is from the recent Young v McEwan Brigden match:

A BIDDING ISSUE to start with:

You are South and at Game All hear your partner deal and open a 'weak' 2D (5-9 with a six card suit):

S Q104
H A65
D KJ1093
C 96

Your Right Hand Opponent (RHO), Malcolm Young, bids 2H. What are your thoughts? As a supporter of 'The Law', your first reaction with 11 trumps will be to bid 5D(the Coaching Notes will eventually have details of what THE LAW OF TOTAL TRICKS is all about).

However, the vulnerability and your defensive values are against this, so you decide to back off a bit and settle for 4D, still taking away a massive amount of bidding space from EW.

LHO bids 4H which is passed round to you. You made your decision not to sacrifice in 5D when you bid 4D, so you pass.

Now for the LEAD ISSUE:

You know your partner has 6 Diamonds, probably with the Ace and Queen since the quality of his suit is rubbish. In fact he may have opened 2D with seven diamonds because of that. So there is no hope of 2 Diamond tricks and very possibly there isn't even one. Also, playing the 'forcing game' is unlikely to work out well since you know the hearts are breaking well for Malcolm. It is tempting to lead a spade. If partner has the King or Ace on the side, you might generate 2 tricks there. Another possibility is that if partner has the Ace of Clubs on the side you might be able to wangle a club ruff by leading a club and hoping the he will work out to duck and give you the ruff when you win your AH and play your second club. As an aside, this shows up the (slight) disadvantage to your side of your own aggressive bidding - you haven't much idea of the rest of the distribution. However, one other possibility and probably the best solution is to lead the KD, hoping that it stands up and you can decide what to do next when dummy goes down. One disadvantage of this is that it may be necessary to lead a club first, and if partner doesn't have the AC, then use his AD to get in to give you your ruff. By the way do you guys have these kinds of thoughts going through your head before you lead? If you don't or you have different ones you'd like to share, let me know.

So you lead the King of Diamonds and down goes dummy, on your left:

S AJ93                N   E   S   W
H J86                2D  2H  4D  4H
D 5                   P   P   P
C K6542
        S Q104
        H A65
        D KJ1093
        C 96

Now for the followup DEFENCE ISSUE: On your KD, partner plays 8D and declarer the QD. What's going on?

After Malcolm turning up with the Q Diamonds, you've discovered that partner has opened a vulnerable 2D with only the A87642 of diamonds. So he must have something outside. Is it likely to be the A Clubs?

No! By playing his highest outstanding diamond, he almost certainly has the King of spades, the 8 being a suit preferance signal under the circumstances (when a continuation in the same suit is obviously not correct, then the highest outstanding card signals for the higher of the oustanding suits). Actually, one other reason for the Spade signal, might be that partner has a singleton or void in Spades. But this is really impossible, since that would place Malcolm with 5 or 6 Spades, in which case he would have bid his spades before his hearts.

However, from your point of view, is a Spade switch correct? It might be if you think the clubs might be able to be set up for spade discards in declarer's hand. For that to happen, then to defeat the contract, partner would have to have a club trick as well as a spade trick. This is very unlikely. If he has the Ace of Diamonds and King of Spades, then the only holding he might have that would help would be QJx Clubs - giving him much more than the nominal maximum of 9 HCPs for opening 2D. Also, by leading a Spade you would likely be helping to set up the spades for declarer because of your unfortunate spade holding. e.g. If Malcolm's hand was xxx KQ10973 Q A103.

So what chance is there to get 4 tricks? It is possible that partner could have Kx of spades and that leading a Spade might allow him to win the King, returning the suit so that when you get in with the A Hearts, you can give give him a ruff. However, one clue to discount that line is that Malcolm didn't double the 2D. If North has Kx Spades, then East would have had 4 Spades, admittedly small ones, but there would have been a strong case for doubling with 8xxx KQ1098 Q AQJ, e.g. So that is unlikely to work. So what is left? With 3 small spades, Malcolm would have bid 2H, but we have seen that now there is a danger of the Spades being set up for a club discard (with him having the xxx KQ10987 Q A103 hand). So the only hope is that he has bid 2H with xx KQ1098 Q AQJ108.

So on that basis you lead a club, going up with the Ace hearts, giving your partner a club ruff and waiting for your setting spade trick. The full hand being:

            S K652
            H 42
            D A8xxxx
            C 7
S AJ93                  S 87   
D J86                   H KQ1097
H 5                     D Q
C K6542                 C AQJ108
             S Q104
             H A65
             D KJ1093
             C 96

If you thought this through correctly, then you are very clever. Also, you are assuming that your partner hiccuped, since with the above hand, he should have overtaken your King of Diamonds lead and returned his singleton club.

So what really happened at the table? South found the club switch, but in the end failed to follow it up correctly, by too quickly 'automatically' ducking the Q hearts lead, sub-consciously hoping that partner had the singleton King. Winning the second heart was too late to give North his ruff. He lazily stopped thinking at the crunch time - typical of the man - playing too quickly without full attention.

Some comfort can be felt by South in that his 4D bid was 'correct' in that 4H could have been defeated and that 5D was always going to be badly punished (-500).

Who were the guilty NS players? If you want to know, contact Ron (01773 778118). Also contact Ron if you want to know more about some of the bidding and defence issues, such as 'The Law' and when suit preference applies.

Finally, if you have any interesting DCBA based hands which you might like to contribute, send them to Ron, especially if any guilty parties are willing to have their names exposed in public. If you don't send him any, then you'll have to put up McEwan-Centric cases.

It doesn't matter how well you play, luck is more important in this game of ours. Here is an example from a recent Brigden match, where Andy Wells found himself in a difficult 6 spades:

How do you fancy your chances on a diamond lead? The king of diamonds is with south.

To find out more click here.userfiles/Criss-Cross.doc

Llangollen Swiss Teams, November 2007

EW Game, Dealer North

The Llangollen Swiss Teams Event is a wonderful mixture of high standard bridge in pleasant surroundings.

Teams play 14 eight board matches starting on Friday evening and finishing before 5 on Sunday.

As a result of some team problems, on the Sunday Ron McEwan played the last 32 boards with a completely new partner, Peter Kaufman. Peter is a fine player who agreed to play the system Ron was playing with Bill Niccol on the Friday and Saturday. This included using the Jacoby 2NT convention.

Jacoby 2NT is an American invention, much used by today's top players. Unfortunately in the hands of Ron, he managed to get it wrong.

The convention is based on the idea of 2NT being a relay bid over partner's one of a major, forcing to game, and asking for more information about opener's hand.

Over 1H - 2NT, the responses of 2S, 3C or 3D show a shortage, while 3S, 4C, 4D show a second 5 card suit.

With no shortage, opener rebids 4H with a hand he considers unsuitable for a slam, 3H with some slam interest  and 3NT with a lot of slam interest .

On this particular hand, Peter bid immaculately, but Ron fell at the last hurdle. He should realise that with no shortage and no K clubs, the slam was a poor bet, and bid 5H over Peter's 5D. There is a lot to be said for Ron passing 4H with his poor holding in the black suits.

John Armstrong is a strong believer in this convention, although there are a number of different treatments which I hope he will be documenting for us shortly.

John was playing at Llangollen and his team finished a creditable 5th out of 58 teams. If Ron had bid correctly on this last board of the last match, Bill's team would have finished 11th instead of 14th. The fact that Jeremy and Heather Dhondy were the other NS pair and also reached 6H is no real excuse.

For all the results from Llangollen, click here.

DCBA Teams of Eight, Division 1, Ripley v Rolls Royce, 15th November, 2007

Game all, Dealer East

Steve Cave (East) opened a fairly normal 2S (some cavaliers might have opened 3S).

Jeff (South) and Derek Brooks (West) passed and Roger Eley (North) bid 2NT, showing the minors.

This somewhat unusual treatment had been agreed beforehand by NS, but aging Jeff's short term memory problems meant he forgot and he treated it as natural, bidding game.

Roger wasn't keen on this and bid 4D, intending to bid clubs later if things turned nasty.

Jeff thought this was a slam try and compounded his felony by bidding 6NT.

Naturally, Derek felt his two Aces justified a double and Roger now got round to mention his second suit.

At last, the penny dropped and Jeff passed. Nasty Derek of course doubled again.

Steve led the sensible Q spades. Roger ruffed this, crossed to the K diamonds, finessed the club, and set up his long diamond, allowing South's hearts to be discarded for 13 tricks and +2380 - a piece of cake.

This fully deserved success was rewarded by Ripley's 20-0 ignominious defeat being reduced to a 16-4 defeat.

DCBA Summer Swiss - Wells v McEwan

NS Vul, Dealer North

At Table 2, this hand exposed a sequence which Ron & Stephen hadn't talked through properly. They use 'fit jumps' in non-competitive auctions, which show 4 card support for opener's suit and a second suit as a source of tricks. Such jumps occur much more often than the game-forcing super strong jump of standard Acol. However, when hands such as this particular one do come up, it makes it much more difficult to get the full strength over without taking up a lot of space. In 'standard Acol' a 3D bid over the minimum 2S rebid would be non-forcing, hence the need for Ron's stultifying 4D bid.

Stephen could have bid 4S or 5D, but chose the imaginative 5C bid. Now Ron had to try to decide which slam to bid - 6D or 6S or 6NT. This seemed very difficult to be sure about and he decided to bid 6D knowing that with his super suit, at the worst he might even be able to survive the possible void in Stephen's hand. What he didn't think of was bidding 5NT. Most experienced players use 5NT as a grand slam force asking for top honours in the agreed trump suit. However, experts also use it when a trump suit has not specifically been agreed to ask partner to 'Pick a Slam'. 5NT here would surely show a Heart control and with the superb QD in his hand, Stephen might twig that this would fill in Ron's long suit and make 6NT the best place to play. This is not necessarily obvious, of course.

Ron went off in 6D after the incisive club lead from Peter. Ron can make it if he works out the card layout, but as usual he got it wrong.

I think this is a very difficult hand to constructively bid to the unbeatable 6NT or even the odds-on 7NT. So if anyone out there has any useful suggestions, please email Ron.

Warwickshire v Derbyshire - July 2007 - Board 15.

NS Vul, Dealer South

Two Derbyshire pairs had wildly different results on this hand.

At Table 1 NS had discussed this particular auction at some length, so North knew that South had at least 4 good clubs, possibly 5. Although North was interested in a slam, he suspected that South's 1NT was based on a weak 11 - 13 balanced hand since South hadn't opened a 14-16 NT, so he was happy to play in a low level game contract, almost guaranteed to score better than 600.

At Table 2, NS had a perfectly rational auction to reach the reasonable 6D by North. However, after 2 passes West made a 'Lightner Double' asking for an unusual lead from East. North realised that this might be based on a void, but since he and his partner had cue bid their way to 6D, thought that the double might be based on two missing Aces and passed. If he had thought a little deeper, he would realise that 6NT was unlikely to cost more that 6D if there were actually two Aces missing. More to the point, however, he should bid 6NT anyway, since the double is usually based on a void and an Ace. In practice, 6NT can be made provided declarer plays the Q clubs, confirming the now likely void.

If 6NT is reached without the double from West exposing a void somewhere, there is some debate about how to play the club suit for 4 tricks. A reasonable way is to play towards the Ace and back to the Queen. If West has a singleton J or 10, then no problem. If he has 10x or Jx, then the restricted choice principle suggests a third round finesse. If East plays either the J or the 10 on the first trick, North will have to decided whether it is likely to be a singleton or not. With no adverse bidding there is probably no reason to play the Q first, and so an uncontested 6NT will probably fail.

On balance, West's double gave NS a chance to escape into 6NT from a 6D which will probably go down anayway, on the singleton J Spades lead.

The 'guilty' North is willing to have his identity exposed, but I'm not going to do it. He has the knowledge and ability to do it himself.

Warwickshire v Derbyshire - July 2007 - Board 18.

NS Vul, Dealer East

The Derbyshire West made three careless mistakes in the play of this hand. To be fair, he had just been presented with his County Tie and his mind was somewhat distracted by this supreme accolade.

West was delighted to be playing in 6S rather than the riskier 6NT. Winning the club lead, he made his first careless mistake at trick 2 when he immediately played the natural looking QS. If he had thought a bit longer than 1 second, he would have realised that if the trumps broke 4-1, he would have to hope that the diamond finesse worked. This, however, required 2 entries to dummy, one to take the finesse and the other to get back to cash the Ace Diamonds.

His second careless mistake was at trick 3. He 'sort of' noticed the 10 Spades from South at trick 2, but quickly shrugged it off and carried on hoping that the spades were still 3-2. If he had taken more time he would have registered that if this was a singleton 10, he would have to finesse the diamond now. Of course that would be wrong if the spades broke 3-2 and North had the Q Diamonds and another club. However, the restricted choice priciple suggests that the 10 is very likely to be a singleton (therefore it is good for South to false-card by playing the 10 from 10x).

When South discarded on the 2nd Spade, West suddenly realised the full error of his ways. He should have played a low Spade to the King at trick 2, realise he needed the daimond finesse and use the Q Spades as an entry to take it and later use the Ace Hearts to get to the Ace of Diamonds. Thinking a little bit deeper at last, he thought to himself:  the only way to make this is to cross to the A Hearts, take the diamond finesse, play KQ spades, KQ hearts, K diamonds and hope that North had only diamonds left.

It was at this point he made his third careless mistake. It was impossible for North to have this distribution unless South had the doubleton Q Diamonds. West should test this after winning the J diamonds by immediately playing the King. If the Q does come down, then it is possible that North started with 4351 distribution and the pure strip and end play would work. But if it didn't come down in two, then North must have 4 hearts and will get off lead with that when he is thrown in. So if  South played a low diamond on the King, West should throw North in at this stage. Now North might be tempted to play a diamond rather than leading in to West's unknown heart holding. (An expert South would have muddied the waters by playing the Q Diamonds with Qxx - on the principle that it is correct to play the card you are known to have).

This is a typical example of the most common fault of amateur declarers - playing too quickly to tricks 1 or 2.

We should all be discouraging slow play from our opponents, but more considered play from our selves and our partners.

If you want to know who West was - contact any member of Derbyshire selection committee.

Warwickshire v Derbyshire - July 2007 - Board 15.

NS Vul, Dealer South

Two Derbyshire pairs had wildly different results on this hand.

At Table 1 NS had discussed this particular auction at some length, so North knew that South had at least 4 good clubs, possibly 5. Although North was interested in a slam, he suspected that South's 1NT was based on a weak 11 - 13 balanced hand since South hadn't opened a 14-16 NT, so he was happy to play in a low level game contract, almost guaranteed to score better than 600.

At Table 2, NS had a perfectly rational auction to reach the reasonable 6D by North. However, after 2 passes West made a 'Lightner Double' asking for an unusual lead from East. North realised that this might be based on a void, but since he and his partner had cue bid their way to 6D, thought that the double might be based on two missing Aces and passed. If he had thought a little deeper, he would realise that 6NT was unlikely to cost more that 6D if there were actually two Aces missing. More to the point, however, he should bid 6NT anyway, since the double is usually based on a void and an Ace. In practice, 6NT can be made provided declarer plays the Q clubs, confirming the now likely void.

If 6NT is reached without the double from West exposing a void somewhere, there is some debate about how to play the club suit for 4 tricks. A reasonable way is to play towards the Ace and back to the Queen. If West has a singleton J or 10, then no problem. If he has 10x or Jx, then the restricted choice principle suggests a third round finesse. If East plays either the J or the 10 on the first trick, North will have to decided whether it is likely to be a singleton or not. With no adverse bidding there is probably no reason to play the Q first, and so an uncontested 6NT will probably fail.

On balance, West's double gave NS a chance to escape into 6NT from a 6D which will probably go down anayway, on the singleton J Spades lead.

The 'guilty' North is willing to have his identity exposed, but I'm not going to do it. He has the knowledge and ability to do it himself.

Corwen - Session 2, Board 4.

Dealer West, Game All, Pairs scoring.

After the fairly normal 2C and 2D bids, North started doubling and EW ended in 2NT doubled. This went 1 down for -200 and a near bottom ..... but on the likely play and defence, EW had run from considerably better scores ... not once ... or twice ... or three times ... but four times!!! 1NT doubled is probably 1 Down (+200), 2D will probably make (+180) as will 2H (+670) and 2S (+670)!

Peter Kelly.

testing calendar removal