smolski - petty win charity pairs - Bermuda Regional Bridge ...

Our next deal featured considerable back
and forth in the bidding and play as well. At
the first tale I was watching our (unnamed)
East passed in second seat at unfavourable
vulnerability; my view on this is that you can
describe the hand well enough by opening
2[ and jumping to 4] over a 2NT enquiry
to show this pattern (but not everyone has
that agreement). East nonetheless managed
to buy the hand in 4[ after his opponents
had bid up to 3{ (North having passed and
then made a weak-jump response in
competition) and on a club lead hastened to
take his two club discards on the top
diamonds. What next?
Declarer is in a good contract, so should
try to ensure that he makes his contract.
With the weak-jump on his right, the best
ply in spades looks to be to lead to the ace,
planning to play a heart to dummy and a
spade towards the queen. This might
jeopardize the contract if there is king-jack
third of spades onside and a bad heart split,
or lose an overtrick if spades are 2-2 with
the king right. But the actual lay-out is
somewhat more likely, I think; at the table
declarer led a spade to the queen and king,
then laid down the spade ace, and could no
longer recover.
Bert Newman got to 5{x with the North
cards after making the same weak-jump
response. His LHO bounced to 4[ and that
prompted the 5{ sacrifice. East found the
interesting top club lead (looking for a ruff?)
and Newman won the ace, then played the
{Q, to find the bad and somewhat
unexpected news in trumps. To try their
best for 800 the defenders must play a top
spade to the ace, then shift to hearts to let
West win, cash the club before the mice get
at it, then play a second spade. declarer has
an answer to this: he ruffs the second
spade, ruffs his club winner back to hand to
shorten his trumps, then takes the two top
hearts, discarding his spade winner, and
leads another club. The defenders can only
score the diamond ace since declarer can
neutralize the diamond nine.
We are lucky enough to have two real experts to be providing lectures this week.
Jade Barrett is well known as a player, teacher and theoretician. It might be less well
known that his 'Team Havoc' T-shirts helped fund the junior bridge program for many
years. He will be talking on Monday at noon.
Barbara Seagram of Toronto had the distinction of running one of the largest bridge
clubs in the world and of co-authoring two of the most popular bridge books ever. Her
books on useful conventions have out-sold just about every other bridge book. She will
present a hands-on seminar on ‘Common Errors of Bidding and Play’ on Tuesday at
4:30. She will run a set of pre-dealt hands with discussions after each. Everyone is
welcome; the Bermuda Bridge Club will be selling Barbara’s books following the
seminar.
You can be sure that you will learn, and be amused.
Daily Bulletin No. 2 –Sunday, January 24, 2010 Page 4