Thursday Bridge Club: No Messing

29th March – Board 13: Game All. Dealer North.

Having a good imagination is an essential attribute of the successful bridge player, which often means bypassing the prosaic in order to do something rather more spectacular. Such was the case with the featured hand where West seemed to have a problem after his partner had made a take-out double of the opening bid and his right-hand opponent had passed. Clearly the hand is too good for 2D and 4D takes you past the most likely winning spot, so I think the solution is to ignore diamonds altogether and – no messing – just jump to the no-trump game. After all, those diamonds are going to provide a bushel load of tricks.

West	North	East	South
	1H	Dbl	No
3NT	End

Of course the no-trump game can be defeated on the lead of a small spade, ducked by declarer, and a heart return from South, but that is never going to happen and if it does you just reach for the next board. In reality you are going to get a small heart lead and while the a priori odds favour taking two finesses in diamonds that would be foolish given that North has opened the bidding and South has remained silent. So play diamonds from the top and enter +630 in your scorecard.

2 comments:

Anonymous1 April 2012 at 16:15
Ok, I wouldn't have thought of it during the game, but a spade lead against 3NT is not as impossible as it might seem: East is probably weak in hearts; the partner didn't support hearts either, so West's NT bid probably shows KJx, or even more. So a heart lead is not a very good idea and it's better if partner lead the suit. On the other hand, if West had spades he would have bidded them. So it's likely that N-S command the suit. Furthermore, South is placed after the opponent with the strength in the suit... Ok, I would probably miss this during a game, but I'll try to learn from it!
Nick M
Dave1 April 2012 at 22:37
It's interesting that if North leads a spade and South wins he must not return another spade but a heart and then North reverts to spades by leading the king. If South does return a spade declarer ducks and wins the third round but now it is essential he takes the diamond finesse. If he plays the ace first North can unblock with the king which would mean that South wins the second round and can now cash his spade winner and then lead a heart for two down.

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