BRIDGE JACK STOCKEN

Today’s hand comes from an EBU Simultaneous pairs event held at Wetherby Bridge club. Sim Pairs are great fun as you play the same hands as many different clubs around the country and then they are all scored up over the internet. There never seems to be a shortage of interesting hands although they are randomly dealt by the computer.

West led the six of hearts against 3NT, won in dummy with the king to preserve the ace as an entry back to hand. Declarer was chuffed to see such a good club suit in dummy. It was really a matter of overtricks she thought, so important at pairs scoring.

Declarer played the king of clubs from dummy, ducked by

East and the dreaded 4 – 0 break. She unblocked the king-queen of diamonds from dummy and played another club to the queen in hand, East ducking again.

It was time to change tack so declarer played the ace of diamonds from hand and was not surprised to see the diamonds break 4 – 2. Declarer could now count seven tricks but had to be careful as giving up a diamond to East would result in a heart return and then declarer could not afford to lose the lead again if hearts were 6–3or5–4.

It was time to broach spades and, with East having length in clubs, West was more likely to have length in spades and hence possess the jack, so declarer ran the ten from hand, covered by West with the jack, king from dummy and East won with the ace.

East got off lead with another spade but declarer was in control now; she cashed her winning spade tricks, the nine and queen of spades and then exited with a losing diamond, won by East’s jack.

East only had clubs left at this late stage so was end-played into leading from ace-ten of clubs into dummy’s jack-nine.

Declarer had made ten tricks, just losing the ace of clubs, ace of spades and the jack of diamonds – that was the top score.