Thursday 18 August 2011
Martin Hoffman wins at the Brighton Summer Meeting
Not very many years ago, if you asked “Who is the best pairs player in Europe”? the unanimous answer would have been Martin Hoffman. At the Brighton Summer Meeting last weekend Hoffman showed that he is still a force to be reckoned with by winning the Swiss Pairs with Mark Teltscher.
Hoffman’s only flaw was his tendency to bid like the Wild Man of Borneo as an often recounted conversation with another expert shows:
“What did you do on board eight, Martin?”
“I made eleven tricks in spades.”
“11? I had to play very well to make 10 – you’re bound to get a top for the overtrick.”
“Well, not exactly – you see, we were in six spades.”
Today’s deal illustrates several facets of the matchpoint game at which Hoffman excels. Love all, dealer South:
Remember that at pairs, if you make 12 tricks in no trumps while the field makes 12 in hearts you will score a top – if they make an overtrick, though, your score will be the opposite. Martin and his partner, Austria’s formidable Maria Erhart, conducted something of a rarity for those two players: a long and technical auction that discovered the heart fit and then rejected it in favour of 6NT. West leads the 10 of diamonds.
Over to you.
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After cashing the ace and king of diamonds, you naturally attack the club suit, rather hoping that the finesse will lose. If it does, there will be no question of an overtrick in six hearts for the other pairs with your cards, while you will still be in excellent shape in 6NT. The queen of clubs does lose to East’s king, and he returns the suit to dummy’s ace. All follow to the queen of diamonds, and East discards a club on the jack while you throw two spades from your hand. Both opponents follow with low cards to the ace and king of spades, then West discards the queen of spades on the jack of clubs. Armed with the knowledge that East began with six clubs, three diamonds and two spades, you realise that he cannot possibly have four hearts, so a heart to the king and a heart to the ace allows you to pick up West’s actual holding of four to the jack.