Sometime last Friday, Geert went over the magical boundary of 500 masterpoints. In the NBB, there are about 110,000 members and about half of them have less than 500 masterpoints. In other words, she is now halfway on the all time ranking list and can claim to be a Club Master (or is it Club Mistress for women?).
The club-manager must have known that something special was going to happen that night, as he had a glass of champagne ready for everybody. (Or was this because the Dutch Bermuda Bowl team was visiting as well?) After the champagne, play started and this deal helped to win the last points:
At most tables, EW quickly bid to 6♠ after 1♠-2♦. When south now led the ♦3, this looked like a singleton and declarer wasn’t tempted to cash a second round to discard a heart. There is a sensible line to make the contract though. Win the ♦A and lead the ♣Q. If it is covered, win and return a club. Declarer then has sufficient tempo to ruff 2 clubs, draw trumps and cash 4 side suit winners. If it loses, south cannot do any harm and declarer eventually gets the same tricks. Get a copy of Deep Finesse if you don’t believe me.
Geert came up with a more interesting lead, the ♣5, for ♣Q, ♣K and ♣A. Now who can blame declarer that he tried to cash 2 diamonds first for a heart discard in an attempt to set up a cross-ruff? Down 1 and +9 imp’s.