BRIDGE

BRIDGE

East-West vulnerable, North deals.

NORTH

xK J 8

uQ 10 8

vA 10

wA K 10 9 8

WEST EAST

xA 10 9 5 xQ 3

u6 3 uA 9 4

vQ 9 5 2 vJ 7 4 3

wQ 5 2 wJ 7 6 4

SOUTH

x7 6 4 2

uK J 7 5 2

vK 8 6

w3

The bidding:

NORTH EAST SOUTH WEST

1w Pass 1u Pass

2NT Pass 3v- Pass

3u Pass 4u All pass

-Checkback Stayman

Opening lead: Two of v

North treated his hand as being too good for a one no trump opening. No good player would disagree with his evaluation. The excellent five-card suit and the rich intermediate cards make this hand easily worth more than 17 points. South used Checkback Stayman over North’s two no trump rebid. This bid of the ”new minor” asked North if he held either four spades or three-card heart support.

South rose with dummy’s ace of diamonds at trick one and led the queen of hearts. When this was allowed to hold the trick, declarer led a diamond to his king and ruffed his last diamond in dummy. Dummy’s last heart was led, this time won by East, who continued with a fourth round of diamonds. South ruffed this in his hand and drew the last trump with the jack of hearts. What next?

Declarer could try tackling the spades by leading low to the jack, and later low to the king, but he was running out of entries to his hand. He had only one trump remaining, so a bad guess in spades would put the contract in some jeopardy. Rather than leading spades, South found the elegant play of leading a low club to dummy’s 10! East was known to have no red cards remaining, so he was forced to lead a black suit into dummy. East did the best and he could and led a spade to West’s ace as South claimed the rest. Note that this line of play would have succeeded even if East held the ace-queen-10 of spades.

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