Goren on Bridge

Esther was beaming! Fred had agreed to play with her again and she had been studying her card combinations for the last three days. She certainly didn’t want to disappoint Fred. Esther recognized Fred’s three spade bid as an effort to get to notrump if she had a spade stopper. She had one, so she bid three no-trump.

Esther won the opening spade lead in her hand with the 10 and took a moment to think about the right play in the diamond suit. It was pretty simple, at least at matchpoint duplicate, where you wanted to take as many tricks as possible. Every other declarer in the room had correctly crossed to dummy with a club and led a diamond to the jack. Even if the finesse lost, the contract would still come home as long as the diamonds split 3-2, as expected. Nothing wrong with this play, but it was a disaster on this hand. Not only did the finesse lose, but the 4-1 split prevented the use of the long diamonds. The contract was routinely down one or two around the room.

Esther came to the same conclusion as the other declarers and she led a low club to get to dummy. She was aghast when she looked down at the table and saw that she had led a low diamond by mistake. She was turning beet red when she saw West play the queen of diamonds. She recovered her composure quickly, and she was pretty sure that no one noticed. West shifted brilliantly to the king of hearts, but Esther scored an overtrick and a top on the board.