Thursday, November 28, 2013

A world class challenge

South is in 3NT and West leads the SQ. Plan Play.

Clearly, in isolation the safety play to bring in five tricks in diamonds is to play a small diamond from dummy. So, let us say you win in dummy and play a small diamond. If, according to plan, (to cater to the 4-1) RHO wins the DQ. If diamonds are 4-1, he will attack dummy's heart entry while diamonds are not yet disentangled. He plays a heart. Now you have to try diamonds from the top and you go down whether the diamonds broke x QT9x or T9xx Q

Let us back up to the 4-1 breaks that you can reasonably handle in view of the entry attack. Do you see the farsighted play at trick one and two that is needed on the only layouts you can make?

In addition to 3-2 breaks which land the contract easily, you can only protect against 4-1 breaks with the SINGLETON QUEEN. Indeed, in this case, you preserve the spade and heart entries in dummy, winning the first trick in hand and DUCKING a diamond. No harm if diamonds are 3-2. The gain comes when you have the 4-1 break with the quingleton. The winner can only remove one major suit entry in dummy. You unblock the DJ winner, use the other major suit entry to enjoy 4 more diamonds and the contract.

Credits to Bridge Master, the learning program on Bridge Base . COM

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

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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

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