19th January – Board 18: North/South Vul. Dealer East.
How would – or did – you defend 4S on the hand shown below from the North position? It might seem that there is little to do, being at the mercy of partner so to speak, but sometimes you have to do the best you can.
West
|
North
|
East
|
South
|
|
|
1S
|
No
|
3S
|
No
|
4S
|
End
|
West is somewhere between three and four spades at his first call but whatever is chosen East will surely push on to game and equally surely South will start with a top diamond. Now from the North position the best chance of setting declarer lies in the ability of his side to obtain a heart ruff and his sole aim should be to point his partner in that direction. Of course for this plan to work South needs to hold the ace of hearts but getting him to cash it and continue the suit is not easy. But how about this? On the ace and king of diamonds North follows with the nine followed by the ten. This cannot be from a doubleton because they would have been played the other way round but as they are obviously unnecessarily high cards they must mean something. That ‘something’ is a suit preference signal for the higher of the two suits outside trumps, hearts in this case. Obvious, but only once you think of it! What you must not do as North is think for a while and then play to the first two tricks in a meaningful way, something I once saw a famous actor/bridge player do in a big tournament. Not that it did him much good.
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