Saturday, June 8, 2013

Defend 3NT. Killpoint for Kranyak to find.

In the USBC finals 1, Kranyak, playing four-handed had a near insurmountable lead of about 100 IMP over redoubtable Fleischer after five rounds of eight. This board arose when Willenken-Rosenberg bid to 3NT.

BBO vugraph commentator said that Willenken took his time before playing to trick one, always a splendid idea. Here, he played the Q, covered and won with the Ace.

Trick two, Jack of diamonds ducked, trick three, diamond to the Ten, East winning.

Willenken's kill-point arose when East played a middle heart away from the ten. He rose to the occasion, by playing small ( a curious mixed metaphor there!). Put yourself in Kranyak's shoes after he wins HK.

Kranyak, proven to be one of the game's greatest players, having pitched near shutouts of great teams such as Nickell, was at the killpoint here. The threat of course was that declarer's tricks in diamonds and spades were ready, but the lurking danger was that Hearts were already set up for 3 hearts. Counter-intuitive as it is to run three clubs in view of a "guaranteed protected King of clubs", it was the double-dummy play here. When he returned a heart, Willenken put the finishing touches to a well-played hand by crossing to diamonds and taking the spade finesse against the spade bidder and earning nine tricks.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Welcome to Ramesh's BRIDGE BLOG

In these pages, I comment on hands from Bridge Base Online ACBL tourneys. I play in these with a variety of partners with different degrees of skill. I might present a hand or two from my collection of bridge books, every now and then. I am more interested in play and defense than in complex bidding systems, but I do follow the cut and thrust of Vanderbilt and World Championship Vugraph and try to keep abreast of expert practice in the obstructive and constructive bidding system department. I may also feature, newspaper-style, famous hands from important matches that I saw on Vugraph.

NOTE: For JUNE, I am experimenting with adding BBO's Handviewers, which make bridge movies embedded. Just
scroll down beyond the few sampled book covers and you arrive at the blogs that play themselves with the NEXT button. THANKS, BBO!!

About Me

My photo
Bridge expert for 20 years. I started blogging about bridge only in 2009. Chess follower. Problem fan. Studied hundreds of composition themes in two-movers, fairy chess, the former from the Good Companion era to the modern style of virtual play. Big collector of chess and bridge rare books. My two game blogs bridge blog, and my chess problem themes blog chess expo

My alter ego, The Hideous Hog

My alter ego, The Hideous Hog

Followers