District 3 regional tournament revived, moved to Suffern, N.Y.
Not so long ago, Greenwich duplicate players could look forward every year to having a six-day regional tournament virtually right around the corner at the Rye Town Hilton. That ended a few years ago when the tournament was moved to Tarrytown for a couple of years prior to the arrival of COVID, which cancelled the event altogether in 2021 and 2022.
In a recent development, the tournament, known as the Joan Gerard District 3 regional, has been revived and will be held at the Crowne Plaza in Suffern, N.Y., Jan. 15 to 19. The hotel is just off Route I-287 (in Rockland County across the Mario Cuomo Bridge) and is about 35 miles from central Greenwich. The schedule may be obtained by contacting the District 3 website at bridge-district3.org.
Elsewhere, the only Greenwich player who finished in the overall rankings at one of the two duplicate clubs in White Plains during the past week was Linda Otness, who finished first overall in Strat A on Dec. 15, and fourth in Strat B on Dec. 21. Both games were held at the Bridge Deck.
Today’s quiz: Here is another in the current series of quizzes on interpreting your partner’s lead. In the following problem, you are given the bidding, your partner’s lead, and your own and the dummy’s holding in the suit led, accompanied by five card combinations that your partner might hold. Taking all available information into account, which of the five combinations do you think your partner might actually be leading from? (More than one of the choices could be correct.)
The bidding: Opponent —1D; Partner —Pass; Opponent —1H; You — Pass; Opponent — 2C; Partner — Pass; Opponent — 3C; All Pass. Partner leads the S5. Dummy has A93 and you have J762. Partner could hold: a) Q1085 b) KQ85 c) 54 d) K105 e) 5.
Answer: The 5 would be the proper lead with four of the five choices, the lone exception being b), with which partner would lead the king (top of a sequence). On the basis of the bidding, however, it is virtually impossible that partner could hold either c) or e), as this would in turn mean crediting the declarer with a four or five-card spade suit, respectively.
While it is obvious that the declarer, who bid diamonds and clubs at his first two turns, could hardly have five spades, it is equally improbable that he could have four spades (headed by the KQ10, no less) either, since he would surely have bid one spade rather than two clubs at his second turn. The bidding does allow for partner to have a) or d), though. Note that as regards d), there is no prohibition against leading away from a king, a notion some players mistakenly entertain.