Bridge - The Scotsman 06/08/2012

Published on 06/08/2012 04:38

Monday’s puzzle...

Regular players know how difficult it is to score 70 per cent in a session of duplicate pairs. So we salute the achievement of Alistair White and Anne Torkington, who broke 80 per cent at Marmion Bridge Club in North Berwick

There were no brilliancies on their card, just a long series of above-average scores like this one. North opened 1D and South responded 1H, bidding his majors up-the-way. North might make a splinter bid of 3S at this point, but settled for a simple raise to 4H. West led the king of spades, and dummy threw a club as declarer won the ace.

It is a good idea at Pairs to set a target, particularly in contracts that you do not expect to make, where a solid one down may score surprisingly well.

Here declarer’s target was 11 tricks. He tested diamonds, playing ace, king and ruffing the third round with the ten of hearts. Had diamonds broken 3-3 he could draw trump and make 11 tricks with ease, but West showed out on the third round of diamonds.

Declarer now needed more than one ruff, so he cashed just one round of trumps with the queen, then tried a club to the king.

East took the ace, cashed the queen and exited with a trump to the ace. When trump broke 3-2, declarer could afford to ruff a diamond high with his last trump. He reached dummy with a spade ruff to draw the last trump and cash two diamonds, thus fulfilling his 11-trick target.