Played bridge with my friend Bettie McLean at her Brookside Country Club game (1 April 2014). On the final board I played 6N:<\/p>\n
S A2
\nH AQT6
\nD KJ5
\nC KJ63<\/p>\n
S QJ9 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 S T876
\nH J7543 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0H 83
\nD T62 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0D Q84
\nC Q7 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 C 8542<\/p>\n
S K543
\nH K9
\nD A973
\nC AT9<\/p>\n
West led the H4 to my 9. I successfully finessed and played clubs. West first and easily discarded a diamond, convincing me he did not have the Q. I saw two possibilities for a 13th trick, either a pseudo-squeeze of East in diamonds and spades or leading KJ from the board to smother West’s T. When no squeeze materialized, I finally played the diamond KJ, East covering with the Q and establishing my 9 as the 13th trick for a top. I realized that against experts, with West’s hand with the diamond Q instead of the T I should promptly discard a diamond to encourage Declarer to try my line and fail, when the finesse would work.<\/p>\n
The next day I played with my mom in Bethlehem. On the following board my mom was playing 4H against Lew Schor (West) and Stan Yellin (East, hands rotated).<\/p>\n
S 5
\nH K8
\nD AQT92
\nC QJ832<\/p>\n
S T9832 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 S QJ74
\nH QJ \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0H 52
\nD K74 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0D J853
\nC AK7 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0C 654<\/p>\n
S AK6
\nH AT97643
\nD T9
\nC 6<\/p>\n
Lew led the CA and got a discouraging 4 from Stan. Nevertheless he continued clubs, apparently establishing dummy, but with the following brilliant effect. Declarer, no longer needing to ruff a spade, could play a heart to the K, dropping the Q. Following restricted choice, Declarer now took the finesse, losing to West’s J for a top for West. Without the club continuation, Declarer would ruff a spade, be unable to take the heart finesse, and drop the Q. Indeed, seeing the hopeless situation outside trumps, West should tempt Declarer with the heart finesse exactly as he did, a brilliant play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Played bridge with my friend Bettie McLean at her Brookside Country Club game (1 April 2014). On the final board I played 6N:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":269,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/269"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1803"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1816,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803\/revisions\/1816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}