Thursday 24 September 2009

Overtime

We tried our best to lose our first round Crockfords match against a team from Wells, but the match ended in an exact tie (the second time this has happened to me this year!) and we won by 11 imps in overtime. This was a declarer play problem that I got wrong


Q 3 2
A 9 3
8 6 3
K 9 6 2


















A K 7 6 5
K J 7 5
K Q 7
J

SouthWestNorthEast
RockH
Rev
11♠
22♣p
22♥
23♠p
33NTp44♠

Partner had a close decision whether to pass 3NT or bid 4 -as my singleton club is the Jack, 3NT is a rather better contract on the actual hand.
West led the Jack of trumps. I won in hand to lead a club, and West went in with the Ace (East dropping the 10) and switched to a diamond. East took the ace and returned the suit. So far, things had been going well but when I played the King of trumps West showed out.
I played a trump to the queen, cashed my other diamond winner (both following) and exited with a trump. If East had no more diamonds he would have been end-played now, but he produced the thirteenth diamond and I had to ruff. Meanwhile East had thrown 3 clubs and a heart. We were now down to


A 9

K 9



















K J 7 5


I crossed to the Ace of hearts and cashed the King of clubs, both following small. It looked as if the clubs were 6-2 in which case the hearts were originally 3-3. I could either take the heart finesse or hope that West had the queen and had been squeezed. As West might have led a heart rather than a diamond with three small in both red suits, I went for the squeeze. Needless to say this was the wrong view and we lost 12 imps when they took the finesse in the other room. Can you see how I should have played to avoid the guess in hearts?