With no-one vulnerable, I hold :
A96 KQ8653 52 K2
and the bidding starts on my left :
1D 1S pass
so I start with what I suppose to be a slightly forcing 2 hearts :
1D 1S pass 2H pass 2NT pass
I correctly assume that 3 spades now indicates to partner to choose a game contract, and she does :
1D 1S pass 2H pass 2NT pass 3S pass 4H all pass
Dummy comes down :
KT843 A74 QJ3 AT A96 KQ8653 52 K2
Left hander leads King and Ace of diamond (right the 8 and the 6, indicating two) and returns another diamond, ruffed with the nine.
Overruffing ? No certainly not. I throw a spade and claim the rest. Elementary safety play, you could say, but the majority in our club apparently did not find it. So I had an almost absolute ZERO.
Why ? .... Spades were 0-5, and RHO did not need my claim to find that return.
And of course hearts were 2-2, so the simple overruff did work.
I calculated the chances : knowing six diamonds on the left and 2 diamonds
and a heart on the right, there are 19.448 possible distributions for the
remaining 17 cards. In 792 cases of those, spades are 0-5.
So the safety play works in 95.93% of the cases.
Of these, 10 cases have spades 3-1 and 15 have them 0-4, so the normal play would not work either, so in fact I was in a 3.94% event of bad luck.
That's me !
The full deal :
KT843
A74
QJ3
AT
- QJ752
J2 T9
AKT974 86
QJ854 9763
A96
KQ8653
52
K2
Last modified : 1998-02-28