| 3rd European Open Bridge Championships | Page 3 | Bulletin 12 - Wednesday 27 June 2007 |
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La haute cuisine Bulgarian or the fine art of playing pairs by Jan van Cleeff Dessy Popova was gracious enough to share some secrets from the Bulgarian haute cuisine of pairs play with your editor. For those who have already forgotten, Dessy and her partner Rossen Gunev won the Open EC mixed title last week.
1♦ Precision Dble promises exactly four spades Redble maximum 1♠ promises exactly three spades Dble explained by Gunev’s screenmate as penalties, explained by Popova’s screenmate as take out 3♠ it’s pairs Against the doubled partscore North duly led his stiff trump to South’s ace and another spade was fired back. Declarer played a low heart from dummy and South erred by inserting her king. Gunev won the ace and exited with the jack of hearts. There was nothing left for the defence. Declarer made three spade tricks in dummy, the ace of hearts and a heart ruff, the ace of diamonds and, due to the favourable club position, three club tricks. On the first round of hearts South should have followed low, on which declarer might try the jack. North wins the queen and should now switch to a diamond, in order to kill declarer’s communications. Against that defence, three spades can no longer be made anymore. What do you have to do to get a swing around here? by Patrick Jourdain All through the Senior Teams tournament Patrick Jourdain has been moaning about the excellent quality of the bridge played against his team in his event. Not that it explains his team’s performance, but as Jourdain explained, his is the ‘strongman’ team, accustomed to carrying the other teams on its back. So far his squad has only been able to beat teams with Englishmen in them (three so far) so when he came up against Paul Hackett’s squad, he was full of hope.
Jourdain declared Five Hearts doubled on a top spade lead. West overtook with the ace and shifted to a top diamond. Jourdain won and passed the heart queen, covered all round as East discarded. Now he had to decide who had the club queen. When faced with the choice of a simple finesse or a squeeze, Jourdain knew what was the appropriate move. He could simply lead a club to the ten, but where was the glamour in that? Instead he played a club to the king, finessed again in hearts then ran the trumps. In the three-card ending he had reduced to a diamond and two clubs in each hand; but what was West to keep? He elected to bare his diamond jack, so Jourdain exited with a diamond and finessed in clubs on the forced return. Contract made for 650 with Four Spades cold the other way. Patrick was happy till he came to the scoring-up, when he discovered that Paul Hackett had duplicated the bidding and play to the letter. No swing. On the next deal Hackett was in the hot seat again.
He played Three No-trumps as North on Peter Czerniewski’s unreadable spot-card ideal in hearts. Dummy played the ace, perforce, and West followed with the jack. Hackett cashed two top diamonds and discovered his nine top winners had turned into eight when West discarded a club. Four rounds of spades followed, East pitching a small heart. Now came a club from dummy. West, Chris Dixon hopped up with the king and shifted to the heart jack. To make the hand it was necessary for Hackett to duck, in effect playing East for his precise hand, AND to have made an error . When he covered the heart, the defence cashed out for two down. So where was the defensive error? East had to discard the ace of clubs on the fourth spade, in order to preserve all three of his hearts and avoid the endplay. Yet again, there was no swing though. In the other room declarer rather feebly crossed to dummy by leading the spade queen to the ace and led a low club from dummy to the jack and ace without running the spades. Martin Hoffman immediately returned a club and declarer was down two at once. Tracks to Tricks Ulf Nilsson is playing in the South African/Swedish Team Apteker who turned threatening defeats to victory in both the round of 16 and 8. Pay a visit to his blog ( http://viewsfromthebridgetable.blogspot.com ) What on earth can we learn from him? Well, here is one example: Open Teams Second Swiss
South led a club to dummy’s ace. Ulf continued with a low spade which went to South, who defended very nicely by cashing a high diamond, on which he got a discouraging signal from North, and now exited with a spade to dummy. Ulf had eight tricks now. A ninth could come from either minor assuming opponents had no communication in hearts. On the run of the spades he could throw three clubs and….what? He decided to abstain from cashing one of his heart tricks and to try for two extra tricks in the minors; this could only be achieved if South had a singleton heart. He threw his small heart and came to his hand with the ace to reach the following position:
South must throw another card. Ulf will play the suit that South decides to shorten himself in, and he also gets a trick in the other suit. As you can see, says Ulf, I could also have left a spade in dummy, played two rounds of hearts to my hand to endplay South the same way. What about Four Spades says I? Can it be made? Use that as your next quiz Ulf suggests. But as that would need an intellectual workout by the reader we have decided to provide the solution on page 12. |
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