by John Barr
I love living in the mountains, and I love walking in the mountains, but I’m not partial to walking up (or down) mountains. For me, the perfect walk starts with a gondola or chair lift that whisks me from the floor of the valley up to somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 metres. I can then walk along the mountain tops for a few hours before stopping at a mountain hut for some refreshment.
High, but flat is the theme for my mountain walks, and it’s also the theme for this hand from a recent teams competition:
As is often the case when a very strong hand is held, South overbid and played in 6NT in both rooms.
In one room, East had opened a multi 2♦️ (which was shown later in the auction to be a weak two in spades), while in the other room East had opened with 3♣️.
In the first room, declarer had ducked the opening lead of the queen of spades (overtaken by East’s king) without giving it too much thought — probably thinking along the lines that it’s often right to duck to cut communication with the six-card suit.
At trick three (yes, two tricks too late), declarer started to think in detail about his prospects. He couldn’t avoid the club finesse but had no obvious discard on the final club.
Reckoning that the diamond finesse would probably be wrong, he cashed the two top diamonds and continued with the king and ten of clubs, taking the finesse and running the club suit.
This was the position when dummy leads the last club: South discarding a diamond. West could not avoid being squeezed in the red suits.
Position after run of clubs
At the other table, where East was expected to have a seven-card spade suit, declarer decided to win the first spade and play on clubs. Again, West has a discard to find on the last club:
A further diamond discard allows declarer to drop the queen, while after a heart discard declarer can play four rounds of hearts, throwing West in to lead away from the queen of diamonds.
Both declarers were disappointed that their clever card play in a slam only resulted in a flat board.
Bridge October 2016
