Bridge: A Big Swing Against a Strong Team

At the European Open championships that finished last week in San Remo, Italy, the two bronze medals went to the English teams captained by Frances Hinden and Janet de Botton. The latter earned her side a big swing against a strong Dutch team. Take the South cards and plan the play in a slam. North-South vulnerable, dealer South.

This has been the bidding:West led the ♦10, and de Botton won with dummy's ace. The problem was to dispose of declarer's fourth heart, and various lines of play suggested themselves. The simplest was to draw trumps and hope that the heart suit divided 3-3, but this was rather less than a 50-50 shot and de Botton rejected it. A more complex line was to ruff a diamond at trick two, play a spade to the ace, ruff another diamond, cross to a club, ruff yet another diamond, cash the ♠Q, cross to a club and draw the last trump with dummy's king. This technique, known as "dummy reversal", would yield three spade tricks in dummy, three ruffs in the South hand, three clubs, two hearts and the ♦A in top cards. It would have succeeded here, but if West were able to overruff a diamond, it would fail. De Botton opted to play ace and another heart at tricks two and three. North could not profit by ruffing a loser on the second round, so he discarded and de Botton played a third round of hearts. West played a fourth round, but de Botton ruffed with the ♠A, cashed the king, and ran the 10. Simple.