Sunday, April 19, 2015

To split or not to split

If everyone is playing double-dummy, automatic plays become wrong plays and strange plays become correct. To imagine every layout of the spot cards, and to go to a fourth dimension, is to transcend ordinary analysis and play like the gods. The west player on the following hand has an interesting problem when clubs are led. (He gets off to the best lead, a trump, and once again when in with the spade King, gets off to a second trump, the best for his side.) His moment of truth arrives when the four of clubs is led from hand. (This hand is a strange echo of the last post "A difficult 8-card ending", once again the club suit is 4-3 West East) It seems automatic to split from Q, J, T, but if he does, he gets to hold the lead, since his partner cannot overtake, Now, if he continues a high club, I win in hand, and use the two dummy entries (trump and Jack of spades) to ruff a club small, establishing the King, and enjoying it for a diamond discard. If instead, West tries a small club,i duck to East's 9, fly Ace on East's diamond return, cross in spades, ruff a small club, setting up King, and cross to trump Ace to take my diamond pitch.

Thus, West's correct play is to time the first round of the club suit (tempo is important!) by not splitting Q,J,T, letting his partner win the 9 which he has to hope he has!! Now East's Diamond return is in time!

In practice I won 7 IMP as west fell from grace and even spared me the hard work, returning a diamond into the teeth of my tenace

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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.

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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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