Thursday, April 10, 2008

Execution Quiz

I picked up this nice hand at teams:

♠ 8
AK10974
AQ7
♣ AQ6

 RHO surprised me by opening 1. I doubled and LHO bid 2, nonforcing. RHO bid 3♣. I had heard enough and jumped to 4. All passed.

A spade was led and a weak dummy appeared.

North Deals
None Vul
♠ 9 7 5 4
J 6 5
J 8 3
♣ J 4 2
N
WE
S
♠ 8
A K 10 9 7 4
A Q 7
♣ A Q 6
I ruffed the spade continuation (LHO played hi-lo) and cashed 2 rounds of hearts which picked up the trumps. What next?

I decided to lead a diamond to the jack to see what would happen. Not only did it hold, but RHO showed out! Hmm...now I have a count of the hand. (Pause here if you want to practice counting...)

RHO started with 6, 2, no diamonds and therefore 5♣. More importantly, LHO was 2-2-7-2. I started formulating a plan. Think about how to best play the hand before you read on.



I led a club to the Q and cashed the ♣A, thereby extracting the clubs from LHO's hand. Now LHO is down to all diamonds, so I simply played Ace and Q of diamonds and he was end played and forced to give me a ruff and sluff so that I made 5!

North Deals
None Vul
♠ 9 7 5 4
J 6 5
J 8 3
♣ J 4 2
♠ 10 3
Q 3
K 10 9 6 5 4 2
♣ 8 5
N
WE
S
♠ A K Q J 6 2
8 2

♣ K 10 9 7 3
♠ 8
A K 10 9 7 4
A Q 7
♣ A Q 6

At matchpoints it would have been a top. At teams it was only worth an imp, but a well executed endplay is usually worth writing about!

See you at the table!