From the desk of Bob Jones:

ELUSIVE DEFENSIVE GEM

December 14, 2012

Hi All,

Sometimes you play a gem of a hand and don’t notice what you had. The beauty of board 4 on Friday eluded all who played it.

As the cards lie
bridge hand

East/West arrived routinely in 4 spades. The declarer varied between East and West from table to table but North/ South had a routine diamond lead from either side. West won and ran the Jack of spades trying to draw trump. How would you continue as South after winning the Queen?

South has an elegant defense available. He can lead the club 2! Declarer will guess right, of course, and win the club King. He will try a second round of trumps losing to the Ace. South now continues with the club 4 to partner’s Jack. When North recovers from his shock at winning the trick, he will reason that partner must have had something in mind when he went to all this trouble to get him in. He must want a diamond ruff. The diamond ruff provides the setting trick. A beauty!

Four spades was bid and made at every single table in the open game. All those experienced players missed the beauty of this great bridge hand. I stumbled into it as I was filling in with Freda at our new Saturday Supervised Play. Supervised Play uses the boards that were played in the duplicate game the previous day. Otherwise, this gem would have been lost forever.

Bob