Thursday, November 04, 2010

Bridge Match 1 - Board 62

Board 62 – Dealer East – No Vul

My hand: Q 6 A K 9 7 9 4 2 K 9 5 3

I open 1 club in second seat. Partner responds 1 heart which gets alerted as Walsh. So partner could have a bad hand with a lot of diamonds. I have a bad hand with 4 hearts, so I bid 2 hearts. Partner acts on and jumps to 4 hearts. East leads the 4 of spades.

NORTH
A T 7 3
J 8 4 3 2
A K 8
6
EAST
4

SOUTH
Q 6
A K 9 7
9 4 2
K 9 5 3


West North East South
Pass 1
Pass 11 Pass 2
Pass 4 All Pass
1Walsh

I have 4 hearts, 1 spade, and 2 diamonds. I can get a trick by dropping Q or Qx of hearts. I can maybe get a trick from the K of clubs. I can find a spade honour onside and get an extra spade trick. I can ruff two spades on board for 2 more tricks, maybe.

Loserwise I have the heart Q, 3 spades, a diamond, and a club. There's no way to avoid the diamond loser other than pitching it on the K of clubs or maybe on a spade trick. The club loser isn't going anywhere. Really, my only hope is to both pick up the Q of hearts and ruff some spades on board. Maybe I can pick up a spade trick to save needing one of those.

What spade should I play here? If East has the J then I need to play low from board. If he has the K then I need to play Q from board. If he has neither then I can trivially establish my T of spades by playing low. (I beat his J with my A, then the stiff Q on board forces the K.) So I should play low unless West has specifically the J and East has the K. Actually, even then my T sets up... Low it is!

4-6-9-T. Guess my T set up faster than I thought it would. Lets explore trump. 2-6-A-5. K-Q-3-T. This game is easy. I now have 11 tricks and can finesse a club for a 12th trick. It loses. Making 5.


NORTH
A T 7 3
J 8 4 3 2
A K 8
6

WEST
K 9 2
Q 5
J T 7
A T 8 7 2

EAST
J 8 5 4
T 6
Q 6 5 3
Q J 4

SOUTH
Q 6
A K 9 7
9 4 2
K 9 5 3


Professor Jack agrees with me all the way!


On the replay the auction is the same but the opening lead is different. East knows North doesn't have diamonds so he leads a diamond. Declarer still found a way to set up the T of spades so he makes five as well.

Nick: 450
Jack: 450
IMPs: +0 (+13 total)

2 comments:

Sky said...

Are you going to move on to match 2 at any point, or just maintain a running total indefinitely?

Ziggyny said...

I don't really have a long term plan. I figure eventually I'll change the format in some substantial way and switch matches then if not sooner. (For example local clubs pretty much just run matchpoints instead of IMPs, so if I ever started to play in clubs again I'd probably want to switch to a matchpoints event instead of IMPs for more relevant practice.)