Malta 1999: 44th Generali European Championships ( Bulletin 12)
You should always learn from the older – we had to admit it when Julian Klukowski of Polish Seniors reported us a board from the Senior match Poland I – Austria 2. In the following board North was to play six spades after a one-way auction (Board 24, Round 6).
Let’s take it as a quiz.
What line of play would you choose after a passive spade lead? You receive a bad mark if you play for a finesse in clubs or a 3-3 break in that suit. You get a sufficient mark if you start by play-ing a heart to the queen and only when this does not work trying the finesse in clubs. You get a good mark if after drawing trumps you decided to play three rounds of diamonds ruffing the third round – East would discard a club and a heart. You deserve a very good mark if you are able to draw proper conclusions from the discards and drive the contract home independent of the location of the honors in clubs in hearts. First, it is absolutely sure that West started with at least five clubs. You cannot imagine a bridge player discarding a maybe crucial club pos-sessing six or seven useless hearts. On this assumption the contract is safe.You draw spades, coming to the ending:
On the last spade you discard a heart from the dummy and East is helpless. Suppose he dis-cards a heart.You play the ace of hearts, not wor-rying what East contributes (it does not matter whether it is the king or not).You play a club to the king and if the king of hearts did not show yet you run a club for an endplay on East. That’s exactly how Klukowski played the board. After hearing the story the “junior” Polish players immediately started checking the possibili-ty of incorporating Klukowski in the younger Pol-ish team. None of us has had a declarer play of close to that standard in the whole Championship.