GOREN BRIDGE

STRANGE PLAY

Matchpoints can make you do strange things. At that form of scoring, your actual score doesn’t matter. The number of match-points that you earn on a given deal depends on how your score compares to other scores achieved by the players who held the same cards as you. On today’s deal, the sight of dummy makes you feel that you were too conservative in the bidding. You are likely to take all 13 tricks. All that is needed is for either red jack to fall on the first three rounds of the suit. This was an easy slam to bid and you expect all of the other pairs holding these cards to bid it. Some pairs, you are sure, will bid a grand slam. Should either jack fall, you cannot achieve a good match-point score on this deal. You will only tie the pairs who bid a small slam and lose to all the pairs that bid a grand slam. To counter this, you can play for a lie of the cards where taking 12 tricks will be a good score. This might turn a below-average deal into a bottom board, but it might also yield a top. To accomplish this, South wins the opening spade trick in his hand and cashes the ace of hearts. He then leads the two of diamonds and plays the three from dummy, voluntarily losing a diamond trick. Assuming that both opponents followed to the first round of diamonds, 12 tricks for you are a certainty. You win any return by the defense and cross to the king of diamonds. You discard two clubs on the king and queen of hearts and come back to your hand with a spade. The ace and queen of diamonds pick up the opponents’ remaining diamonds and you claim the balance. How did you do? Bingo! West started with four to the jack in both red suits and even 12 tricks were not available with normal play. You are a match-point wizard!