Making Life Difficult

by Brian Senior

England has become home to bridge players from many different countries. At last year’s Beijing World Games the Open team included players who came originally from Norway and Sweden, while one of the Women’s world champions hails from Bulgaria. Here in Sao Paulo, the Seniors team includes Gunnar Hallberg, a former Swedish international who has lived in England for many years.

Gunnar was declarer on these two deals in England’s narrow victory over Egypt in the quarter-finals. In both cases he firstly gave the defence a problem and secondly was willing to back his card-reading and be prepared to look foolish if he had got it wrong.

Board 57. Dealer North. E/W Vul.
	♠ 10 ♥ Q J 10 9 8 ♦ 10 9 7 2 ♣ Q 5 2
♠ K J 7 4 ♥ 7 5 3 ♦ K J 6 ♣ A 8 6		♠ A 8 5 3 2 ♥ K 6 ♦ A Q 8 5 ♣ 10 9
	♠ Q 9 6 ♥ A 4 2 ♦ 4 3 ♣ K J 7 4 3

With a heart holding like this Gunnar judged that the lack of a heart lead placed the ace over the king maybe 70% of the time. He won the diamond in dummy and was tempted to play a low club immediately. However, the diamond could have been a singleton so he cashed the ace and king of trumps, getting the bad news there. Then he led a low club to his ten and South’s jack. The first hope was that South might panic and switch to hearts in case declarer had queen-ten doubleton club, but South got it right by cashing the queen of spades then leading a second diamond.

Gunnar won the diamond and cashed the remaining diamonds, throwing a heart from dummy, then cashed all his spades. On the last spade, South decided that he had a problem. Clearly declarer could not have queen-doubleton club as he would have unblocked and cashed the suit earlier, but what if he had started with ten-to-three? Then it would be essential to keep two clubs as North would be down to the bare queen and otherwise a club to the ace would drop the king and queen together, leaving dummy’s eight as the game-going trick. So South bared his ace of hearts and, backing his judgement, Gunnar threw the low club from dummy and led his low heart from hand.

When the ace of hearts appeared, Gunnar had the last two tricks with the ace of clubs and king of hearts to make his game.

Board 65. Dealer North. None Vul.
	♠ ♥ A K 8 7 ♦ A K 6 ♣ A J 9 7 6 2
♠ J 6 5 2 ♥ J 10 5 ♦ 10 ♣ K 10 8 5 3		♠ A 7 ♥ 6 4 3 ♦ J 9 7 5 4 3 2 ♣ Q
	♠ K Q 10 9 8 4 3 ♥ Q 9 2 ♦ Q 8 ♣ 4

With a seven-card suit, Gunnar felt that he had to bid 3♠ rather than make a negative double, but he found John Holland with a very strong hand and the partnership could not stop below the five level. West led the ten of diamonds, an obvious singleton as the Egyptians are not the type to make frivolous pre-emptive overcalls on jack-to-six.

Gunnar thought that the ace of spades rated to be in the East hand. He could play spades from the top and hope to drop a doubleton jack, or find that the diamond ruff was with jack-to-three, but he felt that the actual spade lay-out was quite a strong possibility and the straightforward play would lead to defeat.

So Gunnar won the diamond in hand and led the nine of spades. Even had West held jack-to three spades, he might not have seen a good reason to go up with the jack, but he was never going to do so from his actual holding. When he played low there were only two defensive trump tricks, whether or not West got his ruff, and an ‘impossible’ contract had made.

In both contracts, straightforward play would have made life easy for the defence and led to defeat, but Gunnar gave the defence a chance to go wrong.