Last Trick by Helen Sobel

Have you read [ilink url=”http://csbnews.org/new/a-trick-or-two-by-helen-sobel/?lang=en”]A Trick or Two [/ilink] and [ilink url=”http://csbnews.org/new/?p=44985″]More Tricks[/ilink] by Helen Sobel?

And here is a cute (If I do say so to myself) trick that I put over on our major rival in the National KO Team of Four Championship for the vanderbilt Cup a few years ago. Charlie Goren was my partner and sat east, I was West. Poor South, who got taken in, was the great, no I won’t tell tales. Here is the hand:

	3 K 4 A Q 9 7 4 2 A K 6 3
A 9 7 5 Q J 10 7 6 K 3 J 10		A 8 5 2 10 8 6 5 Q 9 8 5 4
	K Q J 10 8 6 4 2 9 3 J 7 2

South the dealer opened with 4 and that ended the bidding. I quite normally opened the Q. Dummy’s K covered, Charlie won with the A and returned the 2. I won and led the J. The declarer won in dummy and led a trump. Charlie showed out and I topped declarer’s honor with my ace. I then continued with the 10, dummy’s other high one winning.

Declarer’s only problem now was to get back to his own hand to draw the remaining trumps. All he had to do was to lead a suit from dummy on which I would have to follow and ruff it low. He played the A as his first step, and I casually dropped the K.

The worst that can be said for declarer’s going wrong at this point was that he went wrong on a pure 50-50 guess. He eventually decided that my dropping the K was on the up-an-up and consequently decided to get back to his own hand by trumping the third round of clubs. (Obviously he couldnt afford to trump high, since that would automatically set up my nine of trump). When he ruffed the club, low, I overruffed for the setting trick.

Admittedly, if I had followed, on the A with a low diamond, declarer might still have had some problem.  But I think he would have decided on a second round of diamonds to enter his hand rather than the third round of clubs. Certainly the percentages favored that choice and, of course, it would have won the hand for him. But when I false-carded with the K, I had him. But the unusualness of dropping a king on an ace, with the queen openly opposed, was enough to make him go for it.

Incidentally there was nothing difficult or “gambling” about my play. After Charlie showed out of spades, I knew declarer had nothing but trumps left in his hand.

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