Improve Your Play #46

IMPROVE YOUR PLAY #46 with Larry Matheny

There is no doubt that defense can be very difficult. However, a well reasoned plan of attack can also be rewarding. Sometimes it all comes down to who holds the nine of trumps. Take a look at this hand.

Scoring: Matchpoints

Hand #46
Dlr	N
Vul	E-W

	1076
	Q9752
	A
	KQ106

	943
	6
	9874
	A9832

	QJ
	AK843
	10632
	J4

	AK852
	J10
	KQJ5
	75

West	North	East	South
	Pass	Pass	1
Pass	2*	Pass	4
All Pass

*Drury

BIDDING: Both North and East had near openers but chose to pass. After hearing South open 1

, North's passed hand bid of 2

was the Drury convention. This showed spade support with near opening values. The advantage of this convention is that North did not have to jump to the three level to show his hand. This is particularly helpful when South opens light in third seat. South liked his fourteen high card points and jumped to game.

PLAY: West led his heart and East knew from the missing cards that it was a singleton. East was reluctant to establish North's heart queen for a later discard so at trick two he returned a low heart for his partner to ruff. Declarer quickly wrapped up his game losing only two hearts and one club.

The flaw in East's thinking was that a discard was unlikely to help declarer. Since West would undoubtedly have bid over 1

if he held seven diamonds, the only singleton South could logically hold would be in clubs. If that was the case, the contract could not be defeated because South would simply discard his club on the third round of hearts. Therefore the only way to beat the hand was to find West with the right spade holding. Note that after winning the first two hearts, a third round allows West to ruff with the nine. If declarer ruffs the third heart with a high honor, he later loses a trick to the spade queen.

Copyright ©2007 Larry Matheny.