Improve Your Play #55

IMPROVE YOUR PLAY #55 with Larry Matheny

When declaring it is essential to keep good communications between your hand and dummy. This is particularly true when entries are scarce. Here is a good example.

Scoring: Matchpoints

Hand #55
Dlr	S
Vul	N-S

	1093
	A85
	KQ76
	653

	KQJ842

	J1085
	K98

	76
	J1097
	942
	AJ74

	A5
	KQ6432
	A3
	Q102

West	North	East	South
			1
1	2	Pass	3
Pass	3	Pass	4
All Pass

BIDDING: After receiving a raise from his partner, South with extra values made a game try by asking for help in the club suit. North's 3

bid denied help in clubs but indicated a good raise with diamond cards. With a weaker raise, North would have signed off in 3

. South then bid the game.

PLAY: West led the king of spades won by South. Declarer saw that he could discard his spade loser on a diamond honor so that left him with only three probable club losers as long as the hearts behaved. He next played the heart king and received the bad news that he was going to lose a heart trick. To succeed, he must now hold his clubs losers to two. He had to find the top two club honors split as well as the jack in the East hand. It also meant leading toward his hand twice. He had to get rid of his spade loser before leading clubs so he played the top three diamonds discarding the spade. He then led a club to his ten. West won with the king and played another high spade. Declarer trumped and led the queen and another heart to get to dummy. He then led a second club and made the hand when East rose with the ace.

Note you will go down if you first lead a heart to the ace. That entry must be saved for later in the hand.

Copyright ©2007 Larry Matheny.