Bridge at the Creek
In the column today there are only 25 high card points between the north ― south hands; however, they are very well placed and good play will allow you to make the contract.
The bidding by North was very insightful. He quickly recognized that his 6 card club suit headed by AK could quickly be promoted to 5 or more tricks and that his 3 card spade support could easily bring in 6 trump tricks. With the ace of diamonds in his hand he bid 4 NT as key card blackwood and was delighted to have his partner bid 5D showing 0 or 3 Key cards which almost certainly was 3. His 5H bid then asked partner about the trump Queen. When South showed it by bidding 5NT, North very confidentially placed the contract in 6 spades. Now it is up to you as South to make this small slam.
The only way to make the hand is by a technique called DUMMY REVERSAL. In playing most hands Declarer seeks to establish winners in a second suit in his own hand by trumping in dummy’s hand. As we have all learned, this can be doubly advantageous by both eliminating a loser but also perhaps promoting new winners.
In DUMMY REVERSAL however the object is to establish long suit winners in the dummy. The typical problem though is to make sure you still have trump control and access to these dummy winners.
Let’s try the above hand with the opening lead of the heart king. Counting winners we see that in addition to 6 trump winners we can also promote 5 Club winners, which, with the two red suit aces, would give us a total of 13 tricks. Great, now you do it!
To help you I have also shown the opponents hands. After winning the heart ace what do you do?
You didn’t rough a heart in dummy, I hope, because if you did you are going down! The only sure entry to dummy after the diamond lead is via the heart jack. Correct play is to pull two rounds of trump using your ace and king, then proceed to establish clubs by playing ace and king in dummy and then trumping high with the queen. Now you can go to dummy with a small trump and draw the last outstanding trump with the jack and then run the three clubs. If you trumped a heart before establishing the clubs you lost control. Since west had 3 trumps you need 3 trumps in dummy for access to the clubs! Not tough if you remember that your basic plan is dummy reversal.
Do You Think You Know Everything? Think Again.
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- The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.
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- Two-thirds of the world’s eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
- The longest one-syllable word in the English language is screeched.
- One a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.
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- No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver or purple.
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- All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
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- Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.
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- There are only four words in the English language which end in “dous” tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
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Los Angeles de Porciuncula” - A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
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- Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
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- Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
- The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
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- A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
- A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
- It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
- The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
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- Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
- The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
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- “Stewardesses” is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.