Today's hand is from the six-session Life Master Pair event at the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) Summer National Bridge Championships which were held last July in Washington, DC. The hand was published in one of the Daily Bulletins at the tournament. The pair that finished second in the event played the hand in four hearts, making five.
The hand was then published in the Bridge Today Digest Online, a semi-weekly email publication from the publishers of Bridge Today magazine. It was submitted by the pair that finished third in the event. They played the hand at four spades and made five after mis-guessing the location of the queen of spades. The overall scores were so close that had they found the queen and made six on the hand they would have finished second.
The hand appeared again (with the auction shown above) after Marty Baff of Beachwood sent in this account to Matt and Pam Granovetter, the publishers of Bridge Today: "My bid of five hearts was very aggressive but I thought my opponents might be stealing from me. I won the club queen lead with the ace. I cashed the ace of hearts and came back to my hand by ruffing the club eight. I played the heart jack and went up the with ace, felling the queen. I cashed the spade king and played the spade jack, feeling relieved when the queen showed up.
At this point, I was able to count West for three spades, two hearts, and probably only six clubs, since East was likely to have four clubs for his jump to five clubs. I now placed West with a doubleton diamond honor thinking he should have a little something extra besides six clubs to the queen-jack for his preempt. The ace and another diamond completed the hand, allowing me to make six hearts for a fine score."
What Baff means here is that West had to win the second
diamond and at that point had nothing left in his hand but clubs.
His forced club return allowed Baff to trump in one hand while
discarding the last diamond from the other hand. Had West the
presence of mind to jettison the king of diamonds under the ace,
thereby avoiding the endplay, East would be forced to win the
second diamond play, establishing the jack of diamonds as the
twelfth trick. Very nicely done.
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Bernstein is
a free-lance writer in Solon.