But brilliance in Bridge lies with the rare few who become legends in Bridge like Bella Dona, Bob Hamman, Zia Mehmood and a host of other marvellous protagonist of Bridge like the current Italian World Champion Funtoni. Have you ever given it a thought as to why these giants at Bridge always take the bull by the horns and bring about a spectacular result that the lesser mortals can't even think about? Yes it is because they play Bridge with a passion that never rests. They play with alacrity, dexterity, mental alertness and concentration that never dips down.
Today's illustration is a problem hand in dummy play where the declarer is in a quandary lacking the necessary entries to the dummy in order to make his little slam of 6H bid on the following NS hands as under:
The opening lead is the JS from the west and one look at the dummy gives the declarer cold feet for he can see a loser in heart and in clubs with hardly any way to get those golden spades running if breaking 3-2 for a discard (for lack of entries) declarer has 7 trump tricks, 2 spades and 2 red aces for 11 tricks. From where can we find the 12th trick is the vital issue.
As south can you find that elusive 12th trick? and how do you go about in the play of the hand to enable you to get some hope of making the slam?
If you put your thinking cap on, you can see a glimmer of hope. If for instance trumps break 2-2 and the spades 3-2, that would surely make the spades ready to run after one ruff of spades in hand. The problem still would be to return to the dummy to reap the rewards. The only ray of hope lies in the 7 of hearts with the dummy as the possible entry. Is that possible? Only if one of the defenders is lured into taking the 10H at the first trick, which would make 7H a true winner allowing the spades to run. It is not improbable at all if you think of it, for the defenders by habit are inclined to win whatever trick comes their way either by a declarer's inadvertent error or as a compulsion. Fair enough proposition isn't it ?
But what if the defender is alert all the time and considers this free gift as the Greek Trojan Horse remembering that a free gift is always fraught with some danger. So after a spade ruff, playing the 9H by the declarer from the hand would appear a highly unusual and suspicious play - anobvious bait, which a good defender might well refuse holding the following cards:
Our declarer however was far too brilliant. So he laid another bait, one which was not that obvious. After playing the AK of spades he played the 3rd spade and deliberately ruffed low as if he was careless. West fell for the bait, pouncing on it with 10H over ruff. And the defence was kaput! So in bridge remember nothing is hopeless.
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North South
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K87654 A2
73 AKQJ984
1095 A8
J8 A2
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The bidding:
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S W N E
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2C P 2D P
3H P 4H P
4S P 5S P
6H ALL PASS
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West East
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J10 Q93
105 62
K6542 QJ7
K764 Q10953
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