Card Play by Tim Bourke

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Tim Bourke
Tim Bourke

Source: IBPA Bulletin Jan 2010

It’s not the handling of difficult hands that makes the winning player. There aren’t enough of them. It’s the ability to avoid messing up the easy ones. -S. J. Simon

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West led the J.

When dummy went down declarer saw that there was a probable loser in each suit but, as long as trumps were not 4-0, there was a near-certain line to make ten tricks. He took the first trick with the K, keeping the ace as an entry to the heart suit.

At trick two he played the king of trumps and then switched his attention to hearts, playing the ace followed by the 9. After taking his K, West continued with the 10.

Declarer took this with dummy’s diamond ace and led the J. East played the Q and declarer avoided the main trap of the deal and discarded his remaining diamond. (If he had ruffed, West could overruff, cross to East’s Q and a fourth round of hearts would then allow West to make a second trump trick.)

All the defence could do was to make one more trick with West’s queen-jack of trumps; the established 10 would take care of declarer’s club loser.

[box type=»tick»]The key to the hand was declarer realising that he had to make use of dummy’s heart suit and to do so required using dummy’s aces as timely entries.[/box]