Bridge - The Scotsman 05/01/2012

THE Senior event for the D‘Orsi Cup is a relatively recent addition to the World Championships, but it features many great players. England, the holders, did not qualify this year, and the eventual winners were France (Grenthe, Lasserre, Leenhardt, Piganeau, Poizat, Vanhoutte). They beat USA2 (Boyd, Chambers, Kasle, Koslove, Robinson, Schermer) by just 5 imps after surviving a very close semi-Final against Poland, who took the bronze medal.

This deal features Fred Hamilton of USA 1. He reached 6D in fewer bids than most. When West led the king of hearts prospects were poor, and the slam duly failed at other tables, losing two heart tricks. But Hamilton won the ace of hearts and drew trump in three rounds. His West discarded a heart, then, for his second discard, he thought he afford a spade. Declarer unblocked the king-queen of clubs and crossed to the ace of spades to discard one of his heart losers on the ace of clubs. Then he played king and another spade, and when East played the queen he discarded a second heart.

This classic loser-on-loser play meant that East had to give him a ruff and discard, allowing him to throw his last heart while ruffing in dummy.

In the Open event the Netherlands West kept Jxx in spades, throwing two hearts. When the third spade was led from dummy East saw the endplay coming and played a low spade so that declarer could not usefully duck the trick. A great defence.