Bridge is a game of decision making. It follows a logical pattern and has a probability - ratio theory of the lie of cards, which prompts a good declarer to adopt a certain line of play in suit combinations which are endless in bridge. The official encyclopaedia of bridge found 656 situations and yet bridge combination plays had arguments for and against.
Today's illustration rests primarily on choosing that line of suit combination play which calls for only one loser in the following lie of the cards between north and south.
How do you play this combination for a one loser? Do you go for the finesse of the jack or the king? Of course if the suit is breaking 2-2 and you place queen on one side and ace on another, you can finesse the king placing ace on the right, and the jack if you think the ace is on the left and the queen on the right.
But the experts argue that out of the remaining 4 cards, apart from the A and Q, if the deuce appears from east on your right, the correct play is the jack. Even if the 10 appears, the standard play is the jack. This raised interesting arguments. What would east play holding A102? If he plays the 10 he surely will induce declarer to play the jack - that is, therefore, an excellent false card to deceive the declarer. Most experts agreed that 10 would be the best false card to play from a combination of A102. So it was then logical to assume that if east plays the deuce, he does not have that 3 card combination and therefore, the standard play is to finesse the jack.
But in our illustration of the play in the actual hand held by two famous Swedish bridge players Hans Gothe and Per-olov Sundelin, they showed to us a different approach. The full hands were as under:
The bidding was quite interesting and went as under:
If we examine the hand, it would be crystal clear that declarer has no loser in clubs or diamonds or spades. The contact, therefore, depends on how he handles the trumps suit and the visualisation of the missing honours of the queen and ace of trumps.
At the first table in the closed room, north became declarer in 6H with east on lead who led the normal standard lead of 9S. The declarer guessed correctly in trumps by playing the king of trumps, crashing the opponents queen and ace in one go. But on the bidding shown above, with south as declarer, Ehsan Abbasi of Kuwait sitting west made a fantastically deceptive lead which spelled defeat for the declarer. Can you guess what? Not in your wildest dreams would you lead the 10 of trumps, holding of Q10. Yes - Ehsan Abbasi's brilliance and boldness paid off. East won with the ace and shifted to a spade. Declarer happily won with the ace, crossed to the club king and led a trump. When east followed with the 2, declarer claiming he would finesse the jack claimed the contract that with the so called marked finesse working, king of trumps would bring the queen down and give him his laid down slam bid. But when Abbasi, before playing his queen gently said, "Sorry, but the rules force me to take the jack with the queen, which is the only card in the suit and I can't held taking the trick. But you can claim the rest, which indeed are yours."
=============================
North 98754
=============================
South KJ63
=============================
=============================
South West North East
=============================
1NT P 2D P
2H P 3D P
3S Db1 P P
4C P 4D P
4H P 5C P
6H ALL PASS
=============================
================================
North West East South
================================
10 KJ72 98654 AQ3
98754 Q10 A2 KJ63
AKQ94 10763 J5 82
K10 874 Q952 AJ63
================================
Comments
Comments are closed.