National Post (National Edition)

BRIDGE

- By Paul Thurston Feedback always welcome at tweedguy@gmail.com

Today’s declarer play challenge has a sober moral to the outcome: it’s easy to get fatally sidetracke­d if you have a larcenous streak in your character,

North’s artificial response was part of one of my favourite convention­s: in Two Way Drury,a two diamond response by a passed hand shows maximum values for having passed (10-11 highcard points) with precisely three-card support for opener’s major.

South’s heart rebid wasn’t exactly music to North’s liking and he expressed that by retreating to three spades. Notwithsta­nding his partner’s lack of enthusiasm, South, ever the optimist, carried on to game.

In addition to his optimism, had South been less of a would-be thief, he could have made his game after the semi-automatic club lead.

Win the opening lead in the closed hand,cash three top trumps ending in dummy to tackle the main challenge of the contract: bring in the heart suit for no more than two losers. As you can see if you’ve checked out the whole diagram, two heart leads through East will get the desired outcome.

But South thought it a good idea to stop off to try to “steal” a diamond trick before attending to any other issues.

But a diamond to the

King brought a whole lot of bad news: East won his diamond ace to shift to the Jack of hearts. To give the defenders two fast heart tricks and a third-round ruff!

That moan you may have heard at play’s end was an expression of North’s anguish at seeing another “cold” contract ending in the trash can!

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