Four spades cannot be defeated . Nobody at Woodberry found the best defence of a club lead, diamond switch and club ruff, to hold the contract to ten tricks. All those pairs in spades made 11 tricks.
In common with several other pairs, we found ourselves in 3NT by East. Nigel led the diamond ace followed by another diamond to the queen. Anne cashed the ace of clubs and returned a diamond for one down. This achieved a top - all other pairs in 3NT made the contract. I suspect that south led a club or a heart at those tables.
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North
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D
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West
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Board20
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East
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South
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9
9
15
7
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If in 3NT and South leads diamond Ace, it all depends on North's signal doesn't it? South may ignore/notice/not believe North's encouraging signal (or misunderstand the signal - taking the 4 as discouraging if playing High to encourage). South may then just cash the King allowing the contract to make.
ReplyDeleteSignals are not always possible and so after the diamond Ace, South knows the queen has to be with partner or declarer. With no other apparent means of getting the contract down and a string of visible spades to come on which declarer's hearts can be thrown, the small diamond is a reasonable gamble.
ReplyDeleteA lot might go wrong here. South might lead a club. North may switch to a heart when in with the club. Great hand for reverse attitude signals.
ReplyDeleteI hope the following week's blog suggests that the misaligned North hand problem has been sorted. On this hand my partner led a club and I returned a heart from the North hand as that needed East to have Kx, rather than partner to have had AKTx of diamonds missorted among his hearts.
ReplyDeleteThe misalignment problem can be solved by copy typing the hands - but I have not found a way to cut and paste from Pianola and then correct the misalignment.
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