Improve Your Play #44

IMPROVE YOUR PLAY #44 with Larry Matheny

Suit management is more than just finessing. You must be able to look at the entire hand and not just the suit you are about to play. Here is an instructive example.

Scoring: Matchpoints

Hand #44
Dlr	N
Vul	E-W

	J1054
	KQ7
	QJ102
	K6

	9832
	1053
	A7
	J1092

	K
	J962
	865
	AQ743

	AQ76
	A84
	K943
	85

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

BIDDING: North held a poor collection of cards but they included twelve high card points and he felt obligated to open 1

. South had an easy jump to 4

after North's raise.

PLAY: West led the jack of clubs and declarer was in trouble. The defenders took the first two club tricks followed by the ace of diamonds. Declarer won the second diamond in dummy and had to find the king of spades in the East hand. Obviously the spade finesse must be taken but what card should declarer lead from dummy? The correct card should be a low spade to protect against the singleton king in the East hand. However, if there are no more entries to dummy, declarer must play a high spade to stay in the North hand if East fails to play the king.

In a local duplicate game, eight pairs reached the contract of 4