Improve Your Play #06-43

IMPROVE YOUR PLAY
with Larry Matheny

We look again at the importance of overtricks when playing matchpoints. This one is not too difficult but several declarers failed to find the winning play.

Scoring: Matchpoints (Pairs)

Hand #43
Dlr	N
Vul	E/W

	A82
	A983
	J7
	QJ84

	KJ1096
	J
	Q654
	752

	Q543
	6542
	K1083
	10

	7
	KQ107
	A92
	AK963

West	North	East	South
	1	Pass	1
Pass	2	Pass	4NT
Pass	5	Pass	6
All Pass

BIDDING: The North hand is certainly not robust but in today's bridge world where almost any twelve point hand is opened, 1

was the bid at most tables. The South hand just kept getting better. First he had a great club fit with his partner and when his hearts were raised, he went immediately into slam mode. Finding two aces across from him made it easy for him to bid six. Since his partner had shown a minimum hand with his raise to 2

, South made no attempt to get to seven.

PLAY: West had no attractive lead but finally settled on a low diamond. South quickly counted eleven tricks: 1 spade, 4 hearts, 1 diamond, and 5 clubs. The easiest way to a twelfth trick seemed to be to ruff a spade in his hand. In fact, this "dummy reversal" looked like it could provide an overtrick. He won the diamond ace and played the heart king. When the jack fell, he proceeded with his plan. He played a spade to the ace and ruffed one with the queen to unblock the trump suit. Next the seven of hearts to dummy's eight provided the entry to ruff another spade to his hand. He then played a club to dummy's queen and drew the last trump. The club suit provided the last five tricks giving him thirteen in all: 1 spade, 2 spade ruffs, 4 hearts, 1 diamond, and 5 clubs. Note the unblocking play in the trump suit gave him an easy entry to dummy. If he ruffs the first spade with the seven of hearts, the heart suit is blocked. And finally, if West's opening lead had been a club instead of a diamond, now it is too dangerous to use a club to gain entry to pull the last trump. A smarter play would be to just ruff one spade in your hand, draw trumps, and concede a loser at the end. This is too good of a slam to risk going down for the overtrick.

Many people fail to look at the problem from dummy's point of view. If North had declared the hand, ruffing two spades in the South hand would have been obvious.

Copyright ©2007 Larry Matheny.