The opening lead is the seven of clubs and North's ten wins the trick. You can see two spade tricks, two heart tricks, three diamond tricks, and you have a club home for a total of eight. The ninth trick could come from the diamond suit or the heart suit. How should you be thinking about the play of this hand?
What did you learn about the hand from the opening lead? If West was leading his fourth best club, which seems likely, he is still holding the ace, king, and jack. This fact alone makes East the "danger" hand. If East gains the lead and puts a club on the table, the defense will score as many clubs as West has left which will be three or four. The only way to avoid this is to keep East off of the lead.
This simple fact rules out the heart finesse as an option, because if it loses, East will be on lead. That leaves the diamond suit as your only alternative. The correct way to play this suit is to first play a small diamond from the dummy to the ace in the closed hand - just in case the jack is singleton in either hand. Both opponents follow with low diamonds.
Return to dummy with a spade or a heart and play another low diamond. The ten-nine-eight are all equals. If East plays low, play low from your hand. If West gains the lead, your queen of clubs is still a stopper. As the cards actually lie, West shows out and you can now cash your top diamonds, and actually make an overtrick.
Your success on this hand depended on your using the information that you had at trick one and playing accordingly. This is amazingly simple and yet it is overlooked by so many players. You don't have to be a Life Master to think like one, any you will never be a Life Master unless that is what you do.
The American Contract Bridge League held the Labor Day regional bridge tournament in Pittsburgh from September 1 to 6. Congratulations to all of the following local players who were successful in their respective events. Other winners were listed in last weeks column.
Nestor Burkhart of Shaker Heights and Jeannette Jenson of Independence were first out of 28 pairs in the evening side game on 9/3.
Robert Leibold of Brunswick, Russell Kalbrunner of Olmsted Falls, Betty Williams of North Royalton, and Elayne Rupert of Parma finished first in Stratum C (out of 14 teams) of the evening swiss teams on 9/4.
Bernie Greenspan of Beachwood and Albert Freeman of Cleveland were first (out of 58 pairs) in Stratum A1 of the Flight A pairs on 9/5. Mark Rishavy of Westlake and Gary Sikon of Lakewood were first in Stratum A2 of the same event.
Don and Kathleen Sulgrove of Twinsburg were second out of
twelve teams in bracket A of the knock out team event the
concluded on 9/5. Timothy Bakerof Lakewood and Bruce Moore of
Mayfield Heights were members of the team that finished first out
of nine teams in bracket C. Frank Scali of North Ridgeville and
Henry Essig of Westlake were members of the team that finished
second in bracket C.
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Bernstein is
a free-lance writer in Solon.