Monday, February 6, 2017

Plan play in 6NT double dummy. Play or defend?

This real life hand, dealt in a BBO ROBOT IMP tourney provides fascinating scope for double dummy analysis. With best defense, would you care to declare or defend 6NT?

Consider one sample double dummy line on a Diamond lead. Win in hand high, preserving the Ten in dummy. Cash the heart Ace. Advance the SQ, forcing cover all around. Now lead a small heart toward K7. Righty with QJ6 has to split. (If he does not, letting my 7 win, I change horses and build up a club trick by forcing out the king, now 3H+2C+2S+5D =12) Win King and play a heart toward the 98x, establishing a good and long heart (A,K,8, x is 4 heart tricks). East on lead finds that all suits are stopped by declarer, who still has the DT entry, 5Diamonds + 4 hearts + 2 spades + 1 club = 12

Other leads are easier to analyse

So, did you chose to play or defend? What is that? You chose to play? Wrong. The lead of KING of spades prematurely knocks out the dummy entry, leaving you unable to do the fancy trick building footwork in hearts

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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