"Learning to play Cards with Antonio Sementa"
by : Fernando Lema
October
18, 2011
During
breakfast this morning, the World Grandmaster Atonio Sementa
explained me the next hand which he played in the 5th Qualifying
Round against China. In the last hand of the match I received the
following cards:
3
A Q 10 9 8 5
K
J 9
10 6 5
Dealer West
W/E Vulnerable
|
West
|
North
|
East
|
South
|
|
Duboin
|
Li |
Sementa
|
Liu
|
|
1 |
Paso |
1 |
3* |
|
Paso |
Paso |
4 |
Fin |
*Débil
Lead:
K
Antonio told me: When I
saw the dummy,
I realized there were many lines of plays that could take me
home, but I had to make several safety plays because of possible
bad distributions. The
K
lead won the first trick, this was a necessary move to
incommunicate the defense in the club suit, and because I had
decided not to play the heart finesse it was useless to win the
lead.
¿Why did you
decide not to play the heart finesse?
Fernando, if the
trump finesse fails, the defense is clear, South returns a club,
for his partner´s ruff, and later they make the
A
for one down: a spade trick, a trump trick, a club trick and a
ruff. So I win the club return and played a heart to my A,
hoping to see a singleton honor in South or trumps 2/2, if
this happened I could count 10 tricks, giving the
A,
a trump trick and a club, but South played the 7.
Now because
of possible communication problems between my hand and dummy, I
decided to unblock the diamond suit, I played the
J
and took it with dummys Q. Repeated
trump, North played the K
but South pitched a club. North returned a diamond and the
contract started to be in danger, I could have play the
9
playing North for the 10...too
dangerous. I played the K
and South the 8.
I continued with the Q,
to eliminate the last trump and South pitched the 5,
now I play a diamond to dummy´s A
and bad news, South pitched the 8.
¿ And now?
In this
moment the distribution was clear, South originally had 1 heart,
two diamonds, six clubs and so he had 4 spades, and North had 4
spades, 3 hearts, 4
diamonds and 2 clubs, my only chance was to find South with
Q J x x.
I returned to
my hand ruffing the fourth diamond and played all my trumps, to
come to an end of 2 cards, South nedde to keep his
J,
he knew I had the
10,
so he only coul keep the Q
pitching his J.
Now I played
a spade, South played his Q,
I covered with the K
and Northe played his A,
but he had to play his last spade to dummy´s 10...trick
numer 10.
The four
hands:
Thanks
Maestro!!