Bucureºti, 18-3-2005

2 Boards from last monday 14-03-2005, pairs at Atomic.

The contract is a little high. Let us assume that J drops.

Most people lead small is encouraging, strange in the suit bid by West.

You’ll have to decide who has Q, the are divided 3-2.

A wisdom: a Q is always behind a J.

Another wisdom: Lead a trump against slam.

So when South does not lead a trump this could be a clue he doesn’t want to give away the finesse.

Question1: which do you play at trick 1?

In other words: you try a double finesse in and try to discard on high , or do we go for the -finesse?

Question2: where is your taxation of Q, South or North?

I don’t know the best answers; the actual board follows at the end.

Some nice decisions on bidding:

Question1: what to bid?

After you choose something the bidding goes on and you’ll arrive at:

Question2: what to bid now? If you choose 3NT the bidding goes on and the comes:

Question3: you stay put or try an escape?

Trick1: A

Trick2,3: A and continuation

Trick4,5: A and continuation.

Total tricks: 3-, 4-, 1-, 2-tricks is 3NT Dbl +1 makes 950.

We had good understanding; North free bid promised some points.

The NT (South) promised 19-20 points.

I think West wanted to escape to 2. East expected more points.

Still East shouldn’t have doubled, he promised an opening.

He can let the decision to West. If he has 10+ points and an opening at East West can double.

This was board 15.

Winning play: take A.

Finesse Q (North), Q is always after a J.

Finesse K (South).

And what did the Dutch player on this board?

He finessed Q in North.

What a player, you think.

No, no, in Trick1 he played a small , in Trick 2 he was already down by a ruff.

And after A en J North did put Q, otherwise I had gone for dropping the Q.

Teardrops from Louis, the Dutch player.