Parfait Turns Tables
Newcastle Herald
Friday February 6, 1998
THE Parfait team, one of many local teams playing in the National Championships in Canberra this year, had a dismal record after nine matches of the South West Pacific Teams.
At this point they had had three wins and six losses. Match number 10 was the turning point for them but you wouldn't have thought it after the result at their `away' table on board 13 of this match.
A team's `away' table is where their East/West pair sit and their `home' table is where their North/South pair sit.
After an auction that does not bear repeating, for fear of offending sensitive players, the contract at the away table was 3NT by South.
If you want to test your declarer play, cover the East/West cards shown below, put yourself in declarer's seat and decide how you would continue after West leads a small heart.
East covers dummy's eight with the ten and you win the jack.
Which suit do you try to develop? At first glance it looks as though either spades or clubs may provide the best prospects of yielding sufficient tricks.
That's true . . . until you start counting.
Either suit can provide a maximum of four tricks and you can't work both of them. So, for argument sake, let's say you attack spades.
If the spade break is friendly you could get four spades, two hearts and two clubs ? one trick short. A similar analysis using clubs to provide the long tricks will arrive at the same answer.
No, the best suit to go for is diamonds and hope for the diamond queen onside. There is just one catch. You need two entries to dummy to set up the diamonds. You have one certain entry in the ace of clubs and another in spades ? but only if you are careful!
Here is how the play should go.
At trick two lead the club six to dummy's ace. Now comes the diamond ten. East should duck, you play small and West wins the ace. West will return a high heart or a club. You win in hand.
Now comes the key play. Lead the spade eight, not the queen ? a good defender will hold up. Cover the eight with the jack. If that doesn't hold you can still enter dummy by playing the spade queen and overtaking with the king! Take the second diamond finesse and cash the king. The queen drops. So, now you get nine tricks, namely, four diamonds, two hearts, two clubs and one spade. If you did this as declarer did at the time ? well done, indeed.
Not surprisingly, North/South at the home table were not in this dubious contract. This was a bad result for the Parfait team. However, it was their only bad result in the match. They went on to score a maximum win. Their fortunes had changed apparently and they did not lose a subsequent match.
NORTH ; KJ732 k 8 l T7 ' AT854 WEST ; 54 k KQ53 l A52 ' QJ97 EAST ; AT96 k T762 l Q84 ' 32 SOUTH ; Q8 k AJ94 l KJ963 ' K6
© 1998 Newcastle Herald