Dubious Logic

Swiss Roulette

Ipswich and Kesgrave Bridge Club have been testing their technology in running Swiss Pairs events on club nights – and very popular they have proved to be. They aim to score their annual open Swiss Pairs next month (see below) wholly electronically. The experience to date has been most impressive.

Swiss Pairs in a small field – tens, not hundreds – is fun and a great leveller. As your fine play moves you up the field towards top table you play pairs doing equally well. Your results are compared with tables further down the field who are, let's say, not having such a good evening. The results can be a little unexpected. If you do something normal for you – and successful – then you will get a good score even though your opponents do nothing wrong.

This is subtly unlike a normal club evening. There you are in competition with other pairs sitting in same direction, in a Swiss it is how you score against the pair you're actually facing. The last thing you want is to have to solve a problem not met elsewhere – this deal from July's club Swiss.

Let's say you listen to a strange auction: dummy opens with a weak bid showing both majors, declarer shows clubs and spades and they reach game. Partner leads the knave of hearts and you, South, can see:

North wouldn't lead from four cards in East's suit so you duck with the three, retaining the other spots in case they come in useful. Declarer draws trumps, ace, king and queen, partner following. He next leads the club queen to partner's ace. North leads the heart ten – do you overtake?

It's a little tempting: if partner is left on lead to play a third heart, perhaps declarer will ruff and make the rest and you'll not even get the diamond ace (let alone the king). But you have the nine-eight; by playing the eight, partner knows you have the nine (otherwise declarer could cover and create a trick). So you duck and partner continues a low diamond, you win with the ace – what now?

This is a tough problem. Does declarer have

Against the first you need to play the heart ace, against the second another diamond. Could partner know to play another heart? Not really. You might hold ♥A9873 and signalled your length (or attempted to). But that's close to the right question.

Could partner know not to play another heart? Yes – if they held three, they would know from your minimum holding of ♥A983 another heart could not cash. Then their proper play would be the diamond king and another – to save you from going wrong.

So if you trust your partner to make that play, the heart ace is right. The full deal:

Keeping the West hand closed made this a tough problem but had East declared, there would have been no defence.

Ipswich Swiss Pairs: Sunday 13th September 2009, 2:00pm at Kesgrave Community Centre. A two session Swiss pairs, entry for which is £12.00 per pair. This year the event will be scored by BridgeMate and assignments will be done on current round scores. Contact Mike Bone, details on the Ipswich website.

Published Saturday 8.Aug.2009