Piece Of Cake

28th Feb – Board 5: North/South Vul. Dealer North.
Bridge is a strange game when sometimes by doing the completely unexpected you might just earn yourself a big score against a dozing declarer.

The auction might proceed differently from shown of course but I do think that South has to be a little circumspect at adverse vulnerability. In any event I know a number of pairs found themselves in the good diamond game and made it easily when South saw fit to lead his singleton club. Although things started well for the defence that soon ground to a halt for after the first two tricks declarer was in charge. He could win the heart switch in dummy, finesse the diamonds – South would hardly look for ruffs with KQ – draw the remaining trump and ruff two clubs in dummy. Piece of cake! On a red suit lead declarer has to eliminate hearts and ultimately end play poor North, but the play is certainly more complex and - dare I say it - might get overlooked in the heat of battle.

Second Best

10th March – Board 2: North/South Game. Dealer East.

Ironically the one pair who arrived in 4S on those East/West cards gained a top score when the reality is that 3NT is a much better contract and should also come to ten tricks after a low diamond lead. 4S depends upon finding the king of hearts in the North hand and then some more, but if the trumps are drawn and clubs eliminated before a heart is played then North will find himself end-played. (Assuming a safe trump lead.) If you are not playing Benji then an opening bid of 1S will be raised to 2S and it is hard to see West doing anything other than bidding game in that suit. However if you are allowed to open 2C to show a balanced 19/20 points inter alia then I think the bidding might go:

West	North	East	South
		No	No
2C	No	2D	No
2NT	No	3NT	End

I am a great fan of Stayman usually but that East hand is just a little to flat to warrant using it. In 3NT a diamond will surely be led and there seems to be only nine tricks available. However observe what happens if West runs all his black suit winners. With five cards remaining North cannot keep all his diamonds and the heart suit guarded so a clever declarer would exit with a diamond and wait for North to lead away from his king of hearts in the end game.