Dubious Logic

Suffolk at the Pachabo

The English Bridge Union year organises a 'Champions League' – a competition for the champions of each county. In fact there are two; the Corwen Trophy for pairs and the Pachabo Cup for teams. I'm sorry to say that the Suffolk representative did not really distinguish themselves this year but I managed to extract one hand from the team that played in the Pachabo. The event is played under a complex scoring regime whereby points are won for both bettering the opponent's score on each board and for the match result as a whole.

With Hampshire North-South the auction got over-heated (North had to bid four hearts as three would have been non-forcing, a poor treatment but South was unwise to continue in any case). West led a club and this ran to the queen. It looks tempting to draw trumps, cash the top spades and run the diamond queen. If this loses East will find a return difficult – all suits concede eleven tricks. If East ducks then he will have to do so smoothly and if West covers then you might have a nasty guess on the next round but when you ruff a spade in the diagram above, your next play towards the diamond nine will bring in the contract. In practice with the king and length he is unlikely to cover – you might have QJ10x – and the same play has much the same effect.

At the table the Hants. Declarer adopted an eccentric line: he won the third trump in dummy and led a diamond to the queen. Allowing West the lead eased the defence who cleared the clubs and now he had to guess the diamond suit. He elected to reduce to ♦ J63 in hand and ♦ A9 and ♠ J in dummy. If either player had originally held three diamonds or four and the spade queen he would have made eleven tricks: unlucky.

Debby Marriott for Suffolk was in the more secure contract of four hearts. Naturally her thoughts were about overtricks. Receiving the lead of the spade six, she drew two rounds of trumps and when the suit broke cashed the other spade then entered dummy with a trump. As she always intended to run the diamond queen she ruffed a spade and was rewarded with the fall of the queen – this was always a chance as the lead was quite likely to have been from three or four small.

The next try was a low club to the king. Had the ace been with West it would have improved her chances of not losing a diamond. As it was East won and returned a club but the ten came down under the second diamond honour and that was twelve tricks. Here The Suffolk team, completed by P. Sutcliffe / P. Gemmell and M. Allnutt, combined well to win the board in both rooms, I suspect they are wishing they had done as well throughout the event.

Published Saturday 16.Jun.2001