Bridge

South’s 3NT response showed 13-15 points and a balanced hand that included four-card club support. What do you make of that? Some players cannot resist using a convention, even if their hand is unsuitable for the bid. It was not really sensible to bid 3NT with two small hearts and South should have responded with a simple 1D instead. How would you play 6NT when West leads the jack of hearts? Declarer could see eleven top tricks and played well by ducking the heart lead. The purpose of this was to tighten the end position. By removing a card from each of the defenders’ hands, declarer made it more difficult for them to retain all their guards later. Declarer won the next heart and played four rounds of clubs. West discarded a spade and East threw a spade and a heart. Declarer had to guess what to do next. If West held four diamonds, the winning play would be to cash the two top spades. This would force West to throw either a heart or a diamond, giving declarer a twelth trick. Declarer decided to play East for the diamond length. He played the ace, king and queen of diamonds, crossed to dummy with the ace of spades and cashed the remaining heart winner. West had abandoned his guard long ago. Now East had to find a discard from Q-J of spades and the jack diamonds. Whichever card he threw, declarer would have his twelth trick.

Answer

A single jump response normally shows around 8-10 points (and is non-forcing). When your suit is a minor, it is permissible to hold as many as 11 points for a jump response. That’s because game is further away, particularly when you have no stopper in the enemy suit. AWARDS: 3C-10, 2D-7, 4C-4, 2C-3.

David Bird — Knight Features

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