The good results of our team in the second division continue. Yesterday morning, we won our match against Interbridge 1 20-10. In the afternoon, we beat Interbridge 2 on a wild set of deals: 125-52 in imp’s or 25-2. That is almost 7.5 imp/board. 45 VP was good enough to take over the first place after 5 rounds, 4 VP’s ahead of Onstein 4. In the meantime, the favorite team Onstein 3 is in 7th spot, only 1 VP above average, click here for full results. No hands, as I wasn’t playing myself. Next matches are in 3 weeks time.
I did get to play on Friday evening. One interesting hand and one important point that was missed. First, you pick up this hand.
You open 1♥, 2♣ by LHO, 2♠ from partner natural but not forcing, 5♣ by RHO. Your turn? More on this hand later.
Probably the most frequently made mistake in declarer play is to score ruffs in the hand with the long trumps. In theory it is quite simple: ruffs in the hand with the longer trumps never translate to extra tricks, ruffs in the hand with the short trump do. Take the example on the left.
In 7♠, you count 11 tricks from the top: 5♠, 4♣ and 2 aces. Where to get the extra tricks?
Suppose you play a diamond to the ace and ruff a diamond with the ♠6. How many tricks do you have now? Well, the diamond ruff, ♠AKQJ, 4♣ and 2 aces. Those are the same 11 tricks. Now suppose you ruff a heart instead. Now you have 12 tricks: the heart ruff, 5♠, 4♣ and 2 aces. Ruff 2 hearts and you have 13 tricks.
Why does ruffing a diamond not score an extra trick? Well, consider what happens when you play ♠AKQJ6. Dummy has to follow 4 times and then you have to find a discard. That can be a diamond. So all that happened, is that instead of leading a diamond and ruff it with the ♠6, you lead the ♠6 and discard a diamond. That is, of course, the same trick.
Now take this example inspired on a hand from Friday.
You are in 6♥ on the lead of the ♣A and a club to your hand. Now what?
If you don’t look too careful at the hand, you may be tempted to ruff a couple of spades. That won’t work, you lack the entries to ruff 4 spades and get back to hand 4 times. It becomes easy when you remember that you should not score ruffs in the hand with the long trumps. In trick 3, cash the A, then ruff a diamond. Now cross to dummy with a trump and ruff another diamond. Now a spade ruff and a diamond gives you 12 tricks.
Back to the hand from Friday. At the table, most players bid only 5♠. That is an underbid, give partner a really horrible hand for his bidding: ♠KQxxx/♥xxx/♦xx/♣xxx. He’ll never bid 2♠ with that, but still slam has a lot of play, on a club lead, you can ruff and play a spade. If they break, then you already have 12 tricks: 4 spades, 2 club ruffs, 5 hearts and the ♦A. If he has more, slam will become better and better. In practice, he had this hand.
How to bid 7♠ is another question, but the most important thing to remember is to visualize partner’s hand and estimate what you can make.