Bridge

First today, the winners of my Christmas Competition. We had a good entry, but only five got the first question right. Of those, three had just one supplementary question wrong, so tied for first place: Hugh Brown, McCormick, South Carolina; Craig Cordes, Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Bruce Perry, Saint John, New Brunswick. Just behind were James Cordas, South Bend, Indiana, and Veeturi Lakshminarasimham, India. Roger Ebert did not only review movies. He said, “Parents and schools should place great emphasis on the idea that it is all right to be different. You are a lucky child if your parents taught you to accept diversity.”

In this deal, the good declarers made their three-no-trump contract one way, and one lucky declarer made it in an alternative fashion that I had not anticipated. Who did what? South starts with eight top tricks: two spades, three hearts, one diamond and two clubs. The extra winner might come from a 3-3 spade split, but that is unlikely. Much better is to attack diamonds, where declarer needs only a 3-2 break. After winning the first trick, South should play a low diamond from both hands. He wins the heart continuation and does the same thing again. Then he can take the next trick and run the diamonds for an overtrick. One declarer cashed his five major-suit winners before ducking a diamond. Notice that he was all right because West did not have an entry. South won East’s club shift, ducked another diamond and collected the same overtrick — lucky. Next time I use this deal in a class, West will have the diamond king-queen and East the other three.