Goren Bridge

Today’s deal features Tony Duh, an expert from Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), who was sitting South. The four-heart contract was quite normal, and it would produce an overtrick or two on most days. The 5-0 trump split made this a hard one to handle.

Duh won the opening club lead with his ace. He reasoned that it would do no harm to start on spades before drawing trumps, so he led a low spade toward the dummy. He was surprised when West discarded a diamond, but he won the trick with dummy’s ace of spades.

The bad split in spades warned of a possible bad split in hearts, so Duh led a club to his king and ruffed a club in dummy. A diamond to his ace was followed by a low spade. East won with his queen, cashed the king, and continued with another spade. Duh ruffed with the ace of hearts and West was down to his five trumps. When Duh led a low diamond, West was forced to ruff and lead a trump to dummy’s eight. Duh ruffed dummy’s last spade with the queen of hearts and took the last two tricks with dummy’s king-10

Well played!

West would have defeated the contract had he ruffed the spade at trick two and led a heart.

That is almost impossible see and was only noticed in post-mortem discussion. of hearts. to the

Dear Amy: I have a very close friend who is extremely depressed. She is negative about every aspect of her life. She posts negative memes on Facebook about how ugly she is, how depressed she is and how bad life is.

She is on medication and sees a licensed therapist. She is also extremely overweight. None of this is helping.

I want to help don’t know what offer her.

She has told me numerous times that I don’t fully know what has happened in her past so I will never understand what she is going through, and then she proceeds to put herself down. Her marriage is falling apart and I know she has many issues going on with her career and her life.

What else can I offer besides a listening ear, without getting down myself ?

What advice can I give her when she is complaining? — Out of Answers

Dear Out: I think that offering advice in this context is a nonstarter.

When someone is clearly depressed and so obviously negative, the best thing you can do is to point the person toward therapy and treatment. And so you can respond: “What does your therapist say about that?”

Encourage treatment.

I believe posting negative thoughts on social media can actually perpetuate a negative cycle. But try not to judge her harshly for doing this.

A huge challenge for friends and family members in dealing with someone with depression is to be supportive, while not taking on the burdens of the depressed person.

The concept of “self-care” might mean walking outdoors, reading poetry or listening to music. If you aren’t feeling strong, you can’t be a supportive presence. her her else to but I I can continue