A great hand from the Camrose

Usually when you are watching top level bridge on BBO Vugraph you have a pretty good idea of what might happen in the play. It's a much easier game when you can see all four hands. But occasionally someone comes up with a great play that you never saw coming, even with a sight of the full deal. This was such a hand. It comes from the Camrose match between England and Ireland, where Tony Forrester found a brilliant deceptive defence to defeat a cold game.

In the other room David Gold and Mike Bell had played in a safe 3♣, so it looked as if the Irish were set for a big gain when they bid well to reach a Moysian 4♥, the only makeable game contract. Forrester opened with the king of spades and when this was ducked he switched to the queen of diamonds – necessary if declarer’s singleton was the jack. John Carroll played a trump to the king which was ducked, ruffed his losing diamond in hand and played another trump to the ace. David Bakhshi returned a diamond which Carroll won and drew the remaining trumps.

Declarer had a choice of playing for extra tricks in either black suit, but Bakhshi had given false count by playing the 8 on the first spade, so it looked as if the spades were not breaking and Carroll discarded two spades from dummy.

Now Carroll played a club to the ace. The hand looked an easy make but Forrester had other ideas and dropped his king of clubs under the ace. If this was a true card, the contract could still be made if Bakhshi had started with a 3 3 3 4 shape, so Carroll cashed the ace of spades, ruffed a spade and exited with a club, hoping to endplay Bakhshi who would now be down to J 10 x of clubs. No such luck; Bakhshi won and led a diamond so that Forrester could take the last two tricks with the 6 and 7, earning a beer in the process.