After a very normal opening bid, North made a Jacoby transfer bid of two hearts. South bid two spades as requested. North bids hearts twice more to describe his powerful major suit holding. The final bid of six spades is aggressive, but not unreasonable.
West was paying attention and decided to make a neutral lead so as not to give anything away. Declarer won the first trick with the ten of spades in dummy and led the nine of clubs. West took the king with his ace and continued spades.
While it appears that the contract will need the diamond finesse in order to succeed, the declarer found a better line of play. He won the second spade lead in hand with the ace and trumped a small club in the dummy. A heart to the queen allowed him to lead another club and to once again, trump in dummy.
A second heart to the jack in hand provided the entry for declarer to lead his last club, trumping with the last spade in dummy. A diamond to the ace was the final entry to the South hand. The queen of spades extracted the last outstanding trump and the ten of hearts was overtaken by the ace in dummy. The las two tricks were two good hearts and resulted in an excellent score.
It is important to point out that declarer must use his hearts as the entries to his hand while trumping clubs in the dummy. If he returns to hand with a diamond early on, East would be able to discard a heart on the fourth club lead and then score his small trump when declarer attempts to return to his hand to draw that last pesky trump.
Avoiding the diamond finesse proved to be the right play.
The Cleveland Whist Club, Unit 125 of the American Contract Bridge League, is hosting it's annual Unit Dinner and Charity Bridge Game at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 22 at the Solon Valley Pary Center, 6340 Melbury, Solon. This event is open to all bridge players. You do not have to be a member of the unit to attend.
The complete cost of the meal and a session of duplicate bridge is $20 per person. The afternoon will also feature the distribution of awards to winners of the 2006 local masterpoint competitions. New Life Masters will be honored. Reservations are necessary. Please call 330-722-8214 no later than April 15 to reserve your place and indicate your choice of entree (chicken or pasta).
Congratulations to the following local players who have achieved new levels of success in their bridge careers.
Alice Cratcha of Painesville has passed the 1,000 master point level and is a silver life master.
Dorothy Piovano of Medina, A. Jay Stilin of Willoughby, Joy Stones of Stow, and Gene McKimm of Cleveland have passed the 500 master point level and are bronze life masters. Robert Carroll of Warren, Linda Stahl of Chagrin Falls, Patti Perlmutter and Roz Wolf of Beachwood have satisfied all of the requirements and are now life masters.
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Bernstein is
a free-lance writer in Solon. To reach Harvey Bernstein: hjb0416@yahoo.com