The Spokesman-Review – 7 Dic 1936 por Sam Gordon
Hand Shown Below Depicts Angles That Will Please Finesse Hound.
You see some funny things in a bridge game besides the players themselves. Some funny hands come up. Some players play their hands funny. The funniest plays are generally those which come up in hands which offer finesses.
Look at the above hand. There is really nothing difficult about it. But it presents some funny angles, if you are a finesse hound. The temptation to finesse is sometimes too great. But when it first comes up, you want to say, «Get thee behind me, Satan».
There is nothing funny about the way Warren Abercrombie, plays a hand. At least there is nothing funny about it when he is your opponent. Hundreds of hands have I played against him and I have yet to see the joke in anyone of them.
Is pleasure to watch him
It is a pleasure for me to watch the game of such a player, and I often do from the sidelines. I was kibitzing «Abby.’ last weekend in Mr Kraut’s Portland bridge studio when the above hand came up.
Abby became declarer at a contract of six hearts.
West elected to make an opening lead of the lone spade. What liked about it was declarer deliberate study of the hands before he played from the dummy. A master player always takes his longest study before he touches a dummy card. The first trick was taken by the dummy ace of spades. Dummy returned a spade and gave up that trick in East right away. East hoped that West could overruff south, so East led a spade to the third trick.
South Ruffed with High Trump
But South ruffed with a high trump and, of course, the rest of the tricks were easy. After trumps were drawn what South cards were not taken with aces or trumps were stuffed on the established spades. When dummy took the first trick with the ace of spades, in this case declarer could have led two rounds of trumps before giving up a spade trick.
But declarer did not yet know the trumps were held by opponents and if all 4 were in one hand, dummy might need all four trumps for entries by the time the spades were stablished.
When you plan on establishing a suit be sure you have a way to getting back into that hand so that the established cards may be employed for taking tricks and sluffing purposes. There is no use having something if you can not get to it? Or Is there?