Schenectady Gazette – 4 Sep 1953
One mark of a fine player is his ability to take advantage of good breaks when he gets them. To make today’s aggressive four spade contract Mr. Masters had to find the diamonds divided 3-3 and the trumps divided 3-2. But that wasn’t the whole story. He also had to play the hand exactly right.
East Dealer. East-West vulnerable.
MR. ABEL led the nine of hearts, Mr. Meek played the jack and Mr. Masters won with the ace. He saw that his possible losers were one heart, one diamond and two clubs. The only hope seemed to lie in bringing in the diamond suit. At trick two he led the jack of diamonds and avoided the first pitfall when he decided to duck In dummy. If he had played the ace and another diamond at this point he would have lost the contract because of lark of entries on the board, Mr. Meek won the second trick with the queen of diamonds and cashed the king of hearts.
In an effort to kill an entry to dummy he then led the queen of hearts, here MR. MASTERS had to avoid another trap. It would have been fatal to ruff this trick in dummy because then he could never reach the board after trumps were out. Instead of ruffing he discarded a club from dummy, Mr. Meek now shifted to the king of clubs, Mr. Masters won with the are, led his last diamond to the ace, returned a diamond and ruffed. When the suit broke evenly it was all over. He cashed the ace and queen of trumps, led a third trump to dummy’s king and parked his two losing clubs on dummy’s two diamonds.