Safety plays in bridge are not always right. One needs to work out the net gains and losses from them, But knowing what they are is a good start. The lines of a song by Ariane Grande, the performer on the day of the tragic Manchester Arena bombing, came to mind after a hand yesterday:
Tripping, falling with no safety net
Boy, it must be something that you said
Is it real this time or is it in my head?
Got me tripping, falling with no safety net
Diamonds was the suit in which a safety play could be considered yesterday. Lucy tripping in the Sky with Diamonds maybe.
AuntieAnne won two events at the EBU Eastbourne Congress recently, one with fellow Woodberry member Rachel Bourne and one, appropriately as Auntie Anne, with her two nephews Liam and Jamie Fegarty and her sister-in-law Catherine Curtis. She was not going to miss the safety play here. Slam is poor, with only 31 points between the two hands but was a lot better on the spade lead which gave declarer four tricks in that suit. She now just needed four diamond tricks (or three with the ace of clubs onside). One declarer ran the jack of diamonds on the first round, but Anne correctly cashed the ace first after which it was plain sailing. Cashing the ace gains when either defender has a singleton queen, while running the jack on the first round only gains when East has a singleton seven.
One important point, which it took a curry with the Welsh team at the European Championship in Cardiff last night to realise, was that if declarer runs the jack and West is the one with the singleton queen, East must drop the seven from 97xx to give declarer a losing option!
If nothing happens on the ace of diamonds, then you should run the jack on the second round, and if West began with Q97x of diamonds, you will need to find the club ace onside.
One of the consequences of having half the field playing
ReplyDeletelive at the Claremont Centre, is that Paul doesn't get to
review the good and the bad being perpetrated there. Jim
O'Donoghue and I took the same line; happy to see the DQ fall.
I was West on this hand, cashed the AC at trick 1 to stop the overtrick, then led a D. Declarer, perhaps flustered, took the finesse.... They discovered the right play in the post-mortem
ReplyDeleteYes I did notice Jim and Ken had found the right line, the latter because Chantal told me, but Uncle Ken and Uncle Jim did not win two events at Eastbourne, so Auntie Anne got pride of place.
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