Do the Right Thing

Pages: Page 4 of 5

Dealer: West
Vuln: E-W
Scoring: IMPs
  1. spadeJ 10 9 7 2
  2. heart—
  3. diamondQ 10 9 7 5
  4. clubJ 9 5
  1. spadeK
  2. heartA 9 8 7 6
  3. diamond6 2
  4. clubA K 10 6 4
club diamond heart spade NT
N - 1 - - -
S - 1 - - -
E 4 - 5 4 6
W 5 - 5 4 6
Green square in centre
  1. spadeA Q 8 6 5
  2. heartK Q 5
  3. diamondK J
  4. clubQ 8 7

Contract: 6heartx
Declarer: West
Lead: spadeJ
  1. spade4 3
  2. heartJ 10 4 3 2
  3. diamondA 8 4 3
  4. club3 2
Double dummy analyser: makeable contracts
West North East South
1heart Pass 1spade Pass
2club Pass 2diamond* Pass
3club Pass 4NT~ Pass
5heart# Pass 6heart Dble
Pass Pass Pass

* 4SF
~ Blackwood
# two aces

At the table East agonised before passing, and you can see what happened when North led spadeJ. Declarer won in hand and played a heart to dummy, North showing out. Any faint glimmer of hope was extinguished when South ruffed spadeQ and West had to concede one off for minus 200.

South's naive double could have been severely punished had East decided to convert the final contract to 6NT - the best slam of all. diamondA lead would make the contract cold, so imagine that a neutral club was led. With eleven top tricks all declarer has to do is guess diamonds correctly to land 1440.
This deal stirred up nighmares of a deal where I made a similar error to East's. It occurred in the final knockout round of Crockfords Cup many years ago, and it cost us the match ..
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