31st Jan – Board 17: Love All. Dealer North.
Two flat hands with a combined point count of 34 or 35 should be enough to warrant a small slam in no-trumps, but quite often there is horrible duplication of honours in one or more suits.
Playing Benji Acol East opened with the strongest bid in his system and West relayed to find out more about the strong hand. When East showed a balanced 23/24 it was just a matter of simple arithmetic to bid the slam but you can see what I mean about duplication of honours. The top four spades but only three tricks! On a spade lead declarer will most likely take a losing heart finesse and may well be defeated subsequently. As a matter of fact with six points South should know that partner holds nothing at all and has to make a safe lead and that can only be in spades.
I guess I should have (as advised by the opposition) gone for the diamond finesse after the heart finesse lost, especially as West led the 6 of diamonds and I should have taken it at face value as fourth best. I shall try and do better next time!
ReplyDeleteBut could you expand a bit more on what you said about after the heart finesse failed I could have played out my winners, thereby squeezing West into - either throwing a club or diamond away I think you said? What process would I go through that would make me consider that the best chance here is a squeeze as opposed to a diamond finesse?
Robin
When the heart finesse fails you need to either make four tricks in one minor or another or three tricks from both, which will need a measure of luck. If you take the diamond lead at face value then that is the suit you should go for but you might equally hope for North to have the queen of clubs in a two or three card holding. However to combine the odds it might be best to play two rounds of clubs first in case South has the queen doubleton before playing on diamonds when the club play fails to produce the goods. I'm not saying you should play for the squeeze only that it happens to work. At least that is what I think I am saying.
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