Friday, March 25, 2011

Bridge Blog 396: Going all the way

OK, it’s Board 14 in the First Anniversary game Friday night at Bridge Club Meridian. Judy Kaprove and I are up against Peter Patterson and Linda Burroughsford, the Canadian couple, and they’ve just skunked us on a 2 Heart contract, in which I let Peter take an extra trick. Nobody’s vulnerable, Judy’s dealer and she opens 2 Clubs. Big hand. Even bigger when I look at mine:
         
Spades: K-Q-J-10-7; Hearts: K-7-2; Diamonds: 3; Clubs: Q-7-5-2.

Eleven high card points. Five-card Spade suit with two of the top three honors. This doesn’t happen very often. The cards demand that I respond 2 Spades and I do. Judy gives me a 3 Diamond bid and I figure we’ve got it all covered. 4 No Trump. Try for slam. She responds 5 Diamonds, which in the Roman Key Card system means either one or four key cards. She’s too good to have just one. I go straight to 6 No Trump. She thinks for a minute, then pulls all the remaining cards out of her bidding box – 7 No Trump. I get to play it. Peter leads the Queen of Hearts and Judy lays down this hand:

Spades: A-2; Hearts: A-8-3; Diamonds: A-K-Q-J-6-2; Clubs: A-6.

Wow! Six Diamond tricks, five Spades, two Hearts and a Club – 14 tricks. Or is it? I start running out the Diamonds and discover a bad break. Peter has five of them. They won’t run. So I decide to switch to the Spades and absently call for a low one from the dummy, totally screwing up my chances of running the Spades. Even though the hand record claims it will make 7 No Trump, it doesn’t because of the 5-1 Diamond break.  We have only four Diamond tricks – and because of my misplay, we lose four tricks overall for minus 200. Then again, any minus score would have been a bottom. Here are the other hands:

East (Peter)

Spades: 9-6; Hearts: Q-J-10-5; Diamonds: 10-9-7-5-4; Clubs: 8-4.

West (Linda)

Spades: 8-5-4-2; Hearts: 9-6-4; Diamonds: 8; Clubs: K-J-10-9-3.

Club director Dian Petrov has this to say about that:

The deals were generated by a program called "Deal Master Pro" and are random and the analyses of makeable contracts are from "Deep Finesse."
You and Judy were in the best possible contract of 7NT and it makes by "double squeeze" -- you pressure both opponents.
After the lead you win with an Ace and the one with 10xxxx of diamonds needs to keep them and part with a small heart (leaving QJ), now the other opponents needs to keep K of clubs and also needs to part with a small heart ( leaving 96) -- now you have a winner for the 13th trick - very nice board, thanks for pointing that out. Unfortunately nobody made 13 tricks.
Hand records and deals are on:

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