The bridge story from down under

By Phillip Alder

There is one other independently published magazine in English: Australian Bridge

(australianbridge.com). There are six issues per annum, with tournament reports, quizzes, instructive articles for different levels of player and bidding competitions

East in this deal won a brilliancy award for his defense 21 years ago.

Today, I think East would have bid one heart over North’s takeout double. South’s jump to two spades showed some 7-9 (maybe 10) points by a passed hand. Since South might have had only four spades, North might have cue-bid three clubs, which typically announces game-going values but with only threecard support. Note also that three notrump would surely have made.

West led a low club. Declarer won with dummy’s queen and drew trumps with the aid of a finesse through East. (West discarded three clubs.)

Now declarer ran the diamond queen, which won the trick when Robert Fruewirth (East) played low smoothly. South continued with his diamond nine, and after Ben Thompson (West) made the excellent play of the jack, declarer ducked in the dummy. West exited with the club king. South won and confidently played a diamond to dummy’s 10. However, suddenly East produced the king out of his back pocket. Then, after a heart to the ace, West cashed the club jack to defeat the contract.

Great defense, but surely declarer should have played for West to hold the heart ace. So it could not have hurt South to take the diamond jack with dummy’s ace and play a third round of the suit. Still, if your opponents never err, you will have trouble winning.