In the Swiss Teams at the London Year End congress we managed to avoid our usual first board cock-up by making a quiet 1NT, but disasters soon followed as I let though two games and we allowed the oppo to make 6 Hearts when we were cold for 6 Spades. After a 20-0 loss our fortunes improved somewhat and we ended 27th out of 104.
This was an interesting slam hand
Even at green against red, my 3 Hearts was a bit frivolous as it didn't really interfere with the opponents' bidding and warned declarer about the bad breaks. Declarer made 12 tricks by squeezing me in the rounded suits. You can follow the play by clicking on 'Next'.
No-one was concentrating too hard as they had stopped in game but declarer played the hand well. He did give us a very difficult chance to hold him to 11 tricks - when he led ♥Q at trick 3, West needed to ruff high and return a club - a counter-intuitive defence that I only found by running the hand through Deep Finesse. Declarer can make 12 tricks on any defence by cashing one round of trumps before leading ♥Q.
I was sure that Chris and Hil would be in 6 Spades and so it proved. West led a diamond which should make life easier for declarer - a reasonable line is to draw 3 rounds of trumps, then play the top clubs, throw a club on a top diamond and ruff a club to establish the suit. Now exit with a trump and dummy is high. This line needs one of the black suits to break 3-2.
It's an easy game when you can see all four hands and Chris tried a different line by ruffing hearts. When East trumped one of dummy's top diamonds it should have been fatal, but West's defence was not the best and Chris emerged with 12 tricks for a 13 imp gain.
This was an interesting slam hand
Even at green against red, my 3 Hearts was a bit frivolous as it didn't really interfere with the opponents' bidding and warned declarer about the bad breaks. Declarer made 12 tricks by squeezing me in the rounded suits. You can follow the play by clicking on 'Next'.
No-one was concentrating too hard as they had stopped in game but declarer played the hand well. He did give us a very difficult chance to hold him to 11 tricks - when he led ♥Q at trick 3, West needed to ruff high and return a club - a counter-intuitive defence that I only found by running the hand through Deep Finesse. Declarer can make 12 tricks on any defence by cashing one round of trumps before leading ♥Q.
I was sure that Chris and Hil would be in 6 Spades and so it proved. West led a diamond which should make life easier for declarer - a reasonable line is to draw 3 rounds of trumps, then play the top clubs, throw a club on a top diamond and ruff a club to establish the suit. Now exit with a trump and dummy is high. This line needs one of the black suits to break 3-2.
It's an easy game when you can see all four hands and Chris tried a different line by ruffing hearts. When East trumped one of dummy's top diamonds it should have been fatal, but West's defence was not the best and Chris emerged with 12 tricks for a 13 imp gain.
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