Portugal Open Teams 2013 Champions: Team MJoao Lara :
MJoao Lara/M.Capucho/Pedro Pratas/Nuno Damaso/A.Palma/Juliano Barbosa.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky was first published in 1866. In the novel, Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. As Raskólnikov there are players who justify their bridge crimes, many of them receive an immediate punishment …
Last set of the 2013 Portugal Open teams Championship.
In the final Team Maria Joao Manuel Lara faced Oliveira Team. The last set begun 57-42, a small advantage for Oliveira.
Oliveira managed to add 10 IMPs more when they played a slam in the first board of the set, where the Lara team only played game … when board 4 arrived to the table:
Pimenta opened 1
, Oliveira showed his spades, Pimenta his clubs and Oliviera jumped to the spade game, his partner validated the contract with a pass.
Pratas lead his third diamond and declarer could no longer make his contract, he had to lose the 
A and a trump.
At the other table the auction didn’t stop as fast…
Barbosa opened 1
and his partner’s response was a FG call that imposed his spades as trumps. His partner showed a minimum with no spades. Palma decided to show his void while exploring for the possibility of slam, and used the Exclusion Blackwood = 5, asking his partner to answer KeyCards but to exclude in the answer the Ace of the suit he just bid= A. He declared the 6
slam after hearing his partner’s 5 response.
Cruzeiro found himself with the lead and committed the crime to lead his singleton trump.
Santos played his J…and declarer claimed, losing the A.
The hand gave the Lara team 13 IMPs, but the most important thing was that this board became the turning point of the set, at the end of the team MJoao Lara had managed to add 57 IMPs to defeat the team Oliveira: 99-81 Olivera.
Few days ago http://csbnews.org/new posted an article from Marilyn Hemenway: [ilink url=”http://csbnews.org/new/trump-leads-2/?lang=en”]Trump Lead[/ilink] …where Marilyn advises us:
A singleton. Likely when you are short in trumps your partner has length. Thus a trump lead will help declarer to pick up the suit, plus it irritatesyour partner to have his trump honor or honors pickled! You can more likely help partner by leading from a long suit in the hopes of forcing declarer to trump thusreducing his trump length to the same length or shorter than your partner’s.