THE
It is good fun to trawl through ancient bridge books and magazines. In general there was a strong understanding of cardplay 50 or 60 years ago, but the bidding was very hit-and-miss. This deal comes from Manning Foster’s ‘Nine Contract Bridge Problems’. See if you can spot an error in his analysis. It was posed as a defensive problem form the East seat. West leads the king of clubs and you were asked how East should plan the defence. This was Manning Foster’s analysis: ‘East should win with CA and immediately lead SK, with a view to extracting Norht’s entry for th elong diamonds. By this play the game will be save as South cannot establish all dummy’s diamonds after extracting the hearts, and should lose three spades and a club.’ What do you make of that? The prescribed defence is indeed the best that East can do. However, with a skilled declarer at the helm the contract should still be made! Declarer should duck the king of spades return (it would not harm him if West ruffed a spade loser on the next ground) and win the spade continuation. He then draws trumps, crosses to the ace of diamonds, ruffs a club and runs all his trumps. On the lat trump East would have to find a discard from J-9 of spades and Q-7 of diamonds. If he bared the spade jack, you would throw him in with a spade to lead a diamond into the tenace. If instead he threw a diamond, dummy’s suit would be good!
What will you say now on these West cards?
Answer 3NT would not be a good response. Partner’s long heart suit would not contribute at all and you could easily go down. A better idea is to raise to 4H. You hope to make five or six hearts in partner’s hand and to build that total to ten with the help of the top cards in your own hand.
THE
It is good fun to trawl through ancient bridge books and magazines. In general there was a strong understanding of cardplay 50 or 60 years ago, but the bidding was very hit-and-miss. This deal comes from Manning Foster’s ‘Nine Contract Bridge Problems’. See if you can spot an error in his analysis. It was posed as a defensive problem form the East seat. West leads the king of clubs and you were asked how East should plan the defence. This was Manning Foster’s analysis: ‘East should win with CA and immediately lead SK, with a view to extracting Norht’s entry for th elong diamonds. By this play the game will be save as South cannot establish all dummy’s diamonds after extracting the hearts, and should lose three spades and a club.’ What do you make of that? The prescribed defence is indeed the best that East can do. However, with a skilled declarer at the helm the contract should still be made! Declarer should duck the king of spades return (it would not harm him if West ruffed a spade loser on the next ground) and win the spade continuation. He then draws trumps, crosses to the ace of diamonds, ruffs a club and runs all his trumps. On the lat trump East would have to find a discard from J-9 of spades and Q-7 of diamonds. If he bared the spade jack, you would throw him in with a spade to lead a diamond into the tenace. If instead he threw a diamond, dummy’s suit would be good!
Answer