| 1st World Bridge Games | Page 2 | Bulletin 12 - Thursday 16 October 2008 |
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From the NPC's Chair by Phillip Alder Some non-playing captains cannot bear to watch their players, but others like to take an active interest. One of the latter is Tommy Gullberg, the npc of the Swedish women's team. This deal arose in round 7 against Pakistan and features the highly promising Cecilia Rimstedt, who is only 19 years old. Decide what you would have done in her place. (The deal has been rotated to make South the declarer.)
(a) Forcing for one round West leads the spade seven, which you run around to your jack. What is your basic plan? While you are thinking about that, here is a deal that Gullberg saw misplayed by an opposing declarer.
You are in four spades. West leads the heart five, East winning with her ace and returning a heart. You ruff and cash two top trumps, finding that West started with a low singleton. How would you continue from there? Now back to Rimstedt's riddle. This was the full deal:
You hope to win nine tricks via two spades, three hearts, two diamonds and two clubs. But your communications are not of the healthiest. Rimstedt led the diamond ten from her hand at trick two. (Double-dummy, she had to play a diamond to dummy's eight, but who would do that?) West won with her king and would have defeated the contract with a heart shift. But who would do that? Instead, West cashed the spade ace, and continued with the spade queen, East discarding a heart. Declarer took two top hearts, she and West pitching clubs, then put West in with her spade winner, South discarding another club. That left this position:
West was endplayed. She tried the diamond seven, but declarer won with dummy's eight, cashed the heart queen, and threw West in again with a diamond, forcing her to lead a club at trick 12. This is a good candidate for the International Bridge Press Association's junior award – If not for the declarer-play prize. In the other room, West doubled over one notrump, East ran to two clubs, and South doubled that for down two. So Sweden gained 3 IMPs. This was the full deal from the second problem:
In four spades, South ruffed the second heart, drew two rounds of trumps (West pitched a diamond), cashed her top clubs, and ruffed a club with dummy's spade nine. East overruffed and returned a heart. Declarer ruffed, trumped her last club, and ran the diamond jack. West won and exited with a club, leaving declarer stranded in her hand, but when she cashed the diamond ace, the queen dropped! Four spades bid and made – bridge is an easy game. Much better is to draw the last trump with dummy's jack and to run the diamond jack. Then, when you are back in the dummy with a club ruff, you can take a second diamond finesse, getting home whenever East has at least one diamond honor. |
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