Losing Option

9^th October – Board 14. Love All. Dealer East.

I am always happy when situations you read about in the bridge textbooks come up in real life because they rarely seem to do so. In the featured hand East had a chance to dine out for several weeks with a clever play….

	North: S A Q 4 3 H Q 3 D 10 8 4 2 C 10 8 4
West: S K 6 H A 6 5 2 D A J 6 C A J 7 6		East: S 10 9 2 H 10 8 4 D K 5 3 C Q 5 3 2
	South: S J 8 7 5 H K J 9 7 D Q 9 7 C K 9

West	North	East	South
		No	No
1H	No	No	1NT
Dbl	End

You might not like that 1NT bid but I can live with it because the good impletion makes it worth more than a bare ten points. Here the result should have been disappointing from a North/South perspective but things seldom work out as they should. West led a low club, which is hard to criticize, and a grateful declarer scooped up the first trick to lead a spade to the queen. Can you see that East should play the nine (or the ten) on this trick? Failing to do so means that declarer is more or less bound to play the ace next, with happy consequences, but if a high card has appeared from East then South might postpone his play on that suit aiming to lead the jack of spades later in an effort to scoop up a putative ten nine doubleton on his right. Hard to see in the heat of battle and after a slight mis-defence declarer emerged with +180 instead of -100.