Bridge

NORTH'S Baron 2 NT showed a balanced hand of at least 16 points. Although this idea has somewhat fallen out of favour (some players using 2 NT as a forcing raise in the major), I still like myself. It is difficult to express such hands otherwise. West leads the spade jack against 6H. You win with the ace and play a trump to the jack. East following with the two. How would you continue? It would be careless to play the ace of trumps next. The only serious risk to the contract is a 4-1 trump break and you must direct your full attention to dealing with that. The correct play is to run the nine of trumps on the second round. If West covers with the king or ten, you win with the ace and knock out his remaining trump honour. If instead he plays low, the nine will win the second round. You may think it can cost nothing to run the queen on the second round, collecting an overtrick if East should happen to hold 10-2. Not such a good idea when East has found a brilliant duck from K-10-7-2! You would then lose two trump tricks.

Answer

For years I used to make a poor decision on this type of hand, bidding 5C. The most frequent result was that I went one down and then found that 4S would have gone one or two down. You can always justify bidding on with ‘I was taking out insurance’. Nevertheless, you lose a lot of points by with losing decisions at this level. I rate the best action, in the long run, is to double for penalties.

Awards: Double-10, 5C-7, Pass-4.

David Bird — Knight Features

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