More Ether Ore

Another hand from the Soloway/Seligman/Juniors internet bridge match had points for both declarer play and defense. After a slight slip at trick two, declarer recovered nicely to overcome spectacular defense by Soloway.

	J53 J743 J854 QJ
Q1076 KQ652 932 10		K42 10 Q107 A87543
	A98 A98 AK6 K962

South	West	North	East
Dinkin	Soloway	Fout	Seligman
1	Pass	1	Pass
2NT	Pass	Pass	Pass

Dinkin and Fout were playing a 15-17 1NT, so Sam's hand was just a tiny bit too strong to open 1NT. Even though they were playing Walsh style, Fout decided to respond 1

on his rubbish in order to try to keep the bidding low. He did not want to have to contend with partner's reversing. Dinkin showed his 18 points and played in 2NT.

Soloway, West, led his fourth-best heart. Ducking from dummy is normal; it wins if the lead is from K10 or Q10. This time, as it always seems to for me, the Ten forced the A. With only six tricks, Dinkin should attack diamonds immediately, hoping for a seventh there and an endplay to supply the eighth. Declarer slipped and tried to set up hearts instead. Since the defender winning this trick was Paul Soloway, the defense found the counter to this play that illustrates why diamonds needed to be attacked at trick two. He shifted to his singleton club, destroying the entry to dummy. The good news is that the singleton was the Ten, which informed declarer that his 9 was his seventh trick. Seligman won the A and continued the suit, leaving the lead on the table.

With seven tricks in the bag, declarer had to pave the way for an endplay for his eighth trick. Since either spades or diamonds could supply an extra trick if the defenders led them, he exited with another heart, East pitching a club. (He'd pitched one on the second heart, too.) Since a heart lead would be fatal, Soloway had to exit in one of the pointed suits. If his partner had held either the 9 or 8, leading the 10 would be safe---a surrounding play of declarer's hypothetical other high spot. But he didn't know which King declarer had; if the K were the K, a spade shift would be fatal. So, he exited with the 9. Everyone covered that and declarer had another problem. Before deciding upon his endposition, however, he had to cash the last two clubs in order to remove exit cards from the East hand. On these two tricks, West discarded his last two hearts, and dummy threw a diamond and the good heart, leaving this position:

	J53 --- 85 ---
Q107 --- 32 ---		K42 --- 107 ---
	A98 --- A6 ---

Judging well the location of the diamond cards, perhaps from the lead of the Nine, Declarer played two rounds of diamonds. East won and, perforce, played a spade. This ran to West's Queen, but he had to continue spades. Since West had not overcalled, declarer chose to play him for the

10, rather than the KQ and won the last two tricks to make his contract.