Delicate

Hi all,

House of Cards – Season 4: Complete. Must see: Affirmative. Counting down to April 24th now for Game of Thrones – Season 6.

Here’s a nice deal from an evening at HOK. At my table both declarer and defence botched things up, but during the post mortem we spotted a delicate beauty to it. South gets to declare 4 after West crowded the auction by preempting in .

East Dealer
NS Vul
North
8732
5
AK83
KQ63
West
9
AKJT873
J94
T2
East
AJ64
962
QT2
974
South
KQT5
Q4
765
AJ85

West leads a top and switches to .

Plan A:

Declarer wins in dummy and plays a trump to the King. The Queen of gets ruffed in dummy and another trump to the Ten. Declarer crosses to dummy in to play dummy’s final trump. Leaving:

East Dealer
NS Vul
North
8
A83
Q63
West
JT87
J9
T2
East
AJ
9
QT
97
South
Q5
76
AJ8

When the 8 is played from dummy East will rise and play the 9, tapping declarer. 

Result: Failure.

Plan B:

Declarer wins the in dummy and plays a trump to the King. Next he crosses to dummy in to play another trump towards the Ten. Again declarer can cross in to play a 3rd round of trumps. Leaving:

East Dealer
NS Vul
North
87
A83
63
West
 
KJT87
J9
East
AJ
96
QT
9
South
Q5
Q
76
AJ

When the 3rd round of trumps is played from dummy East rises with the Ace and fires back the Jack of trumps. Leaving declarer with four inescapable losers.

Result: Failure.

Plan C:

Declarer wins the switch in dummy and continues with the other top and exits a to East. East might try the forcing game by switching back to which declarer ruffs in dummy. Now it is time to tackle trumps by playing one to the King, cross in and another trump to the Ten. Leaving:

East Dealer
NS Vul
North
8
8
Q63
West
JT87
T
East
AJ
9
97
South
Q5
AJ8

On track declarer cashes a top in hand before crossing to dummy in .  The thirteenth now neutralises East. If East decides to postpone the inevitable by discarding a , South can discard his last . Coup complete.

Result: Success.

As long as declarer sets up a winner in dummy declarer can always get to 10 tricks.

Vanilla

Hi all, 

Some random tidbits:

  • I saw Deadpool in the theatre. Verdict: Awesome!
  • My friend Petra made me a salad with blood orange & asparagus and combined it with salmon & vanilla mayonaise (!). Mind blowing.
  • Kees and I adopted a new system: Terrorist Moscito. Light & possibly canapé Major suit openings, boatloads of symmetric relays and gadgets to my heart’s content.
  • After 2 months in my apartment I can genuinely say it fits me like a glove. Home.

Here’s a nice deal. It was the first board in one of the last matches in the teams season. Viking style.

North
AQ4
A
AQ5
AK9742

Quite a pure 23-count. What a hand to pick up first thing.

West
North
East
South
 
11
pass
12
pass
1NT3
pass
3NT4
pass
43
pass
45
pass
4NT3
pass
56
pass
5NT3
pass
6NT7
pass
78
a.p.
 
  1. 16+ hcp
  2. or balanced
  3. Relay
  4. 8-11 hcp, 5 crd suit and 6 crd suit
  5. 5-6-2-0
  6. No Aces
  7. King & King
  8. That’s all folks!

It takes years of playing a relay system but some day it will pay off. This was one of those days.

It’s so nice to visualise the declarer play during the auction. I knew Kees could set up my suit by ruffing twice and then draw trumps to claim the remainder. This was the full deal: 

North Dealer
– Vul
North
AQ4
A
AQ5
AK9742
West
853
73
87643
J86
East
J6
K854
J92
QT53
South
KT972
QJT962
KT

Kees took some time after West led a , but decided any alternative plan, like setting up the suit, would run into transportation problems as well as significant dangers of running into (over)ruffs.

He ruffed two in his hand, drew trumps and found the friendly split in . Taking all.

Now at the other table the opponents found themselves in some hot water after North opened a multi 2 (intending to show a strong hand with ) and South asking with 2NT (because of a presumed 11/12 crd fit). Nobody knew how or what to bid next, so with awkward jumps things crash landed in 6NT. I guess somebody was very, very happy with that T9 combination.

Cheers!