Manuals for student texts

Barbara Seagram and David Bird published “Planning the Play of a Bridge Hand” in 2009. Now Jonathan Shute has written two teacher’s manuals to go with that book, “Planning the Play of a Bridge Hand — Teacher’s Manual for Part 1/ Part 2” (all Master Point Press). The teacher uses Shute’s book, and the pupils buy the original. Each book contains six twohour classes aimed at intermediate or slightly weaker players. The deals are excellent.

In this deal, how should South plan the play in three no-trump after West leads his fourth-highest spade, and declarer takes East’s jack with his king?

West has a textbook preemptive opening bid (although he would prefer a singleton somewhere). South, assuming his partner has 6 or 7 points, gambles on three no-trump.

Of course, if you or I had been sitting West, we would have led the diamond 10 and defeated the contract by four tricks.

South starts with eight top tricks: one spade (the first trick), two hearts and five clubs. He does not have time to play a diamond, because the defenders will take that trick and run the spades. (There is no reason to assume that West has an eight-card suit.) Instead, declarer must take three heart tricks, which involves finding the queen.

It is not guaranteed, but South should use the “empty spaces” principle. West has seven spades and two clubs, so only four spaces for the heart queen. In contrast, East has only two spades and two clubs; therefore, he has nine spaces for the heart queen. It is more than 2-to-1 in favor of finessing through East.