The Hour – 6 May 1996 por Steve Becker
The Cavendish Invitational, is perhaps the strongest pair tournament in the world. The annual event, which, un-like most bridge tournaments, awards substantial cash prizes to top finishers, customarily numbers many of the world’s best players among its 40 pair field. 
Today’s deal occurred in last year’s contest, which was won by Paul Soloway and Harry Tudor. The hero of the deal was multi-world champion Jeff Meckstroth, who, with characteristic opportunism, took advantage of a couple of harmless-looking defensive slips by his opponents to bring in a seemingly hopeless four heart contract.
Meckstroth was no doubt a bit surprised when dummy produced a balanced 12-count for his takeout double of West’s weak two heart opening. Given the lie of the opposing hearts and diamonds, declarer appeared destined to go down one, losing two hearts, a diamond and a club.
Meckstroth played low from dummy on the opening diamond lead and won East’s nine with the ace. The A-K-J of spades were cashed, East discarding a supposedly useless club on the third round. Meckstroth then led the innocent-looking heart six from his hand.
West gave this a hard look and decided to play low, no doubt fearing East might have the singleton king. When dummy’s jack held, nothing appeared to have been lost, since West still had two heart tricks coming. But Meckstroth had a different idea. A low club was led from dummy, East winning with the jack. East’s club return was covered by the king and ace, and dummy’s third club was led to East’s queen, on which Meckstroth discarded a heart!
When East, continued with his last club, Meckstroth again discarded hearts from both hands. It was here that East’s earlier club discard came back to haunt him. Left on lead with nothing but diamonds, he was forced to return one into dummy’s K-J, and the ‘impossible’ contract was home.
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