Wednesday 8 July 2020

Five Diamonds Twice

I was watching some Scotland Lockdown Teams on Bridge Base the other day. All excellent declarers, but they had some blind spots playing these 5♦ contracts.

Put yourself in East's shoes. You've done well to get to 5♦. On the Spade lead you finesse and it holds. You now have good chances of 11 tricks: six Diamonds (assuming they split 4-2), two Spades and three Clubs, if they split 3-2 and the King is onside. They key is that if you're going to get all those Club tricks you need to keep an entry to dummy.

You play a Club back to hand and draw three rounds of trumps. They don't split so there is still one master trump outstanding. You have to leave it out and play on Clubs now, while you still have the spade entry. Declarer here didn't do this and played another Diamond, but got lucky when South didn't knock out the Spade Ace. On the other table declarer was also in 5♦, but inexplicably played low on the first Spade trick so always had to lose one Spade, one Diamond and one Club.

On to the next 5♦:

East lead the ♣2, which looks very much like a singleton. Declarer won, and wisely discarded a losing Heart from hand (on the other table declarer discarded a Spade and then had no chance). After taking the ♥A and a heart ruff it's decision time. The winning line is to cross to hand, draw trumps, then give yourself a 50-50 shot at guessing Spades. Instead declarer tried a second round of Clubs, ruffed by East and one off.

Am I being unfair on these declarers? Perhaps it's all only obvious seeing all the hands.

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