Cookie

What would you do?

My partner, given this problem, passed, and earned himself a cookie (and 100% of the matchpoints).

Blind Spots

Thanks to some excellent comments on an earlier post, as well as a simple defense problem posted on the BBF Beginner/Intermediate forum, it's becoming clear to me that I've got a blind spot - namely, overtaking on defense.

I've put aside Kelsey's Killing Defense, as I felt like it was a little over my head. Maybe it just required more effort than I was able to put into a read just now.

I'm going to have to find a way to address this problem.

Knowledge is Power

Even though I still have a lot to learn, every so often a hand comes along that I just seem to know what's going on around the table. I'm finding that these types of hands are a lot of fun.



Opening lead: Ten of diamonds

So why didn't west lead a spade? Well, if east has 7, that leaves none for west!

Ok, so west has AKxxxxx in spades. Any chances he has either of the minor suit kings? Unlikely, as he might have opened 1S with 10 HCP and a 7 card suit.

I decide (rightly or wrongly) to try for a 3-3 diamond split with the king on my left, so I won in hand and led a diamond towards the 8. It held, but RHO showed out.

I continued with the jack, LHO winning. A diamond was returned to the board. I lost a spade and the ten of hearts from my hand.

Ok cashing the ace of diamonds would be catastrophic, as I'd squeeze myself. I'm still guaranteed a club entry to dummy, though, so I'm still ok. Expecting that the finesse would fail, and knowing that a holdup could cause me problems, I led a club to the ace, then a low club back, which was covered by west. When the ten of clubs fell out of east's hand, I was guaranteed 3NT+2, for 100% of the matchpoints.

Gutted

You win the third round of hearts, and immediately attack clubs.

I'm completely gutted that I did not duck the first club trick. This is a play that I would expect to make.

After his hand, I (somewhat melodramatically) messaged the following to my mentor: "Apparently I have no idea how to play bridge."

VuGraph Tricks

I seldom watch VuGraph, but yesterday decided to try to watch a few hands from the Bermuda Bowl. Thanks to one of the commentators, I learned a new trick yesterday.



I happened to observe the open room between Germany and Bulgaria. West (the dealer), Andreas Kirmse, played in 3 spades, after a competetive auction in which all four players bid. If I had to guess, I would say that east opened and south overcalled along the way.

The opening lead was the 5 of hearts. While I don't recall exactly how things went, south presumably took the ace. For the sake of illustration, we'll say that south, Bulgaria's Diyan Danailov, returned the 9 of clubs. North cashed his two club winners, and returned a third club, which south ruffed.

At this point, my feeling was that it didn't matter, much, what south returned. His ace of diamonds should always be cashing (the Germans don't appear to have a running side suit for discards).

Danailov cashed his ace of diamonds before exiting. One of the commentators pointed out that he was pretty much marked with the king of spades from the bidding (his partner has already shown all 6 of his points). Cashing the ace of diamonds can be seen as an attempt to show all his points, to give declarer more of a guess as to the location of the king of spades.

Alas, declarer Kirmse wasn't to be fooled. He won, and led a low spade to dummy. After a moment's consideration, he correctly rose with the ace, dropping the king.