Goren on Bridge

Esther was delighted to have Fred as her partner once again at the local duplicate. Fred had been urging her to be more aggressive in her slam bidding, and Esther had promised to try. She wasn’t sure what to do when Fred bid four spades. It was so long since she had bid a slam that she forgot about Blackwood. She just took a deep breath and jumped right to six. “That was exciting”, she thought.

Esther won the opening heart lead with her ace and was torn between drawing trumps or ruffing her heart losers. Something bad often happened when she didn’t draw trumps right away, so she started by leading a spade to dummy’s 10. The 4-0 split was nerve wracking, but Esther led a club to her ace and ran the queen of diamonds. Finesses were her specialty.

The queen held the trick, as Esther expected, but East hesitated before ducking his king. Esther noticed this, for some reason, and decided that East was trying to be clever. She led a diamond to the ace hoping the king would fall. When it didn’t, Esther decided that she’d better start ruffing something and hope for the best. She ruffed a club in her hand and a heart on the board, followed by another club ruff before ruffing her last heart with dummy’s last trump.

She ruffed another club in her hand and when she looked at her last three cards, two of them were high trumps. She threw her cards on the table with joy, claiming her slam. 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. E-mail responses may be sent to tcaeditors@tribune.com. © 2018 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.