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The Daily Bridge Calendar is an attractive long-running product with a tear-off sheet for every day of the year. The face of each page contains a bridge problem, with the solution on the reverse. Since the product is North American, most of the expert contributors are from that part of the world. Occasionally they have a guest writer from England and this year it is the turn of Julian Pottage. This is one of his problems from the 2003 Calendar. South makes a dubious 3S overcall and ends in 6S, West leading the two of diamonds. How would you play the contract? There is a potential loser in each black suit. After winning the diamond lead with the ace, you should ruff a diamond to reach the South hand and then lead the queen of trumps. West covers with the king and dummy’s ace wins, the nine appearing from East. You return to hand with a heart and finesse dummy’s seven of trumps. As the cards lie, you pick up the trumps and can survive a losing club finesse. East’s pre-empt has suggested seven diamonds to West’s three, so he is likely to be short in the trump suit. Even without this inference, the appearance of the 10 or 9 from East is twice as likely to be a singleton as a chosen card from 10-9 doubleton. Leading the queen would restrict the trump losers to one when West held all four trumps too.
It is a common mistake to rebid 3D on this type, just because you have 17 points rather than a minimum 12. A rebid of 3D is game-forcing and quite a rare bid. You are not strong enough for such an action on this hand. It is barely possible that you can miss a good game, should partner pass a 2D rebid, On many hands partner will give you preference to hearts and you can then advance with 2NT. AWARDS;2D-10, 1NT-6, 3D-4. David Bird — Knight Features
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