Goren on Bridge

The club’s Saturday night duplicate was well under way when Lucky Larry found himself declaring three no-trump on today’s deal. Larry ducked East’s 10 of hearts at trick one, thinking it was routine good play. East, however, held most of the missing high cards and he knew that continuing hearts was hopeless — Larry needed both the ace and the king for his opening bid.

East shifted to the queen of clubs at trick two, won by Larry with the ace. Larry led a low spade to dummy’s queen, losing to East’s ace, and East continued clubs. Larry won with the king and took the diamond finesse. When that lost, Larry was down one with two club losers and one loser in every other suit.

Hard Luck Louie took a different view when he played the hand. He presumed the diamond king was offside — all of his finesses lost — so he decided to look elsewhere for some tricks. Louie captured East’s 10 of hearts with the ace at trick one and led the king of spades. East won with the ace and continued with the jack of hearts, ducked this time by Louie.

West smartly overtook the jack with the queen and led a spade through dummy’s queen-10. Louie rose with the queen of spades, crossed to his hand with a high club, and ran the queen of diamonds.

The finesse lost, as usual for Louie, but there was nothing for East to do. East exited with the queen of clubs, but Louie had nine tricks.

At long last, Louie had outplayed Larry on a hand. Well done, Louie! Bob Jones welcomes readers’ responses sent in care of this newspaper or to Tribune Content Agency, LLC., 16650 Westgrove Dr., Suite 175, Addison, TX 75001. Email responses may be sent to tcaeditors@tribune.com. © 2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.