Bridge Tournament, Continued

Nearly two weeks have elapsed since I partnered with Dan at the San Mateo Sectional Bridge Tournament (see my post on March 17th). Although we got off to a slow start, I tried to minimize mistakes rather than attempt “brilliant” but risky moves and our scores began to improve. There’s a rule-of-thumb that you should bid “down the middle”, i.e., attempt to bid the same contracts that you think the rest of the field is bidding and rely on your superior play (hah!) to achieve an above-average result on each hand. Fortunately for us, my partner held the cards that night so it wasn’t difficult to steer most of the contracts to him.

Below is one hand that I played:


When my partner bid three spades, I knew he had a very good hand but wasn’t sure whether he had four or five spades. Showing a great deal of trust, he left me in three no trump.

Even with a bad spade break I could see nine tricks: three hearts and two in each of the other suits. If the spades broke 3-2, then there would be eleven tricks in no trump and we would outscore the pairs making five spades. I took the diamond lead perforce and lead a low spade to the queen, North dropping the ten without hesitation.

The hand was becoming complicated due to the lack of entries to the West hand. Say I cash the red-suit winners in dummy, then lead to the jack of spades, South ducking again and North showing out. I should probably take the two red kings because I could be in my hand for the last time. That would leave me exposed without a diamond or heart stopper, whereupon it would be too dangerous to continue spades. Nine tricks would be the limit.

Alternatively, I could go to dummy and lead up to the eight of spades, but if it lost to the nine I couldn’t bear the look on partner’s face. Even if the eight won, should I then cash the two red kings? No, I’m not going to finesse the ♠ 8.

Maybe there’s a way to set up the clubs. If so, I have to duck a trick before the heart and diamond stoppers are gone. So at trick three I lead to the queen and ace of hearts, both to clear out the blockage in hearts and to tempt a defensive error. Back to the ♠ J, South ducking his Ace and North, as I feared, pitching a heart. Now a low club to the seven and South’s eight. This is the moment of truth, when South can take his Ace and nine of spades, holding me to ten tricks, but wouldn’t you be tempted to lead a red suit in this position?



South leads the queen of diamonds, and, after the clubs break 3-2, I make 11 tricks in no trump, which was a tie for a top score. South had a difficult decision, because it was hard to tell that the clubs were running. This was the complete hand:



At the end of the evening, I was flabbergasted to discover that we had finished first out of 17 East-West pairs. I thanked Dan, who went to the Nationals in Reno last week with an experienced partner. Meanwhile, I have a book to read. © 2004 Stephen Yuen