Sunday 8 June 2014

An impossible throw-in

The Sunday was a teams event, and Ed Jones came down to join us. I played with Ian Angus, and Martin Stephens with Ed. This is actually a pretty strong team, and we managed to make the main final despite being a good 20 IMPs down after the first 10 boards of the 26 board qualifier. In the final, I played possibly the worst bridge I've played for about 4 years. Not really sure why, I think I was probably mostly just tired.

Anyway, I'm not going to write about any of the hands I played in that session, so here's one where Jun got an interesting result. He lost two of the first three tricks in 3NT, and then made his 11th trick on a throw-in... 


I'm not sure if that was the actual auction, but I do know that Jun, with the long ♦ hand, ended up as declarer in 3NT. The lead was the ♣5, and Jun went up with the ♣A to take a ♦ finesse (he now thinks, and I think I agree with him, that this was a mistake. Basically, the entry to dummy can be used for something more useful than taking a ♦ finesse, so you should save it for later). Anyway, this lost, and North returned the ♣4 - as Jun puts it "kindly giving him a picture of the entire club suit". Jun ducked this, and put in the ♥Q on the ♥ return. He now cashed a top diamond and South showed out. Jun continued with another top ♦ on which South showed out again, and exited with the ♦5 (preserving the beer card), as North also showed out. This was the actual ending, with South having failed to follow twice in ♦s:


When South now wins this ♦ trick, he has to give declarer access to dummy, and an 11th trick (and, actually, a 12th trick, but that's overkill, as he's already lost two). With the 1 trick transfer, that brought Jun's total up to 11. Note that if South hadn't revoked, Jun was stuck in hand and could only make 10 tricks, as he'd eventually have to play a ♥ away from the AT. 

So now the important question... does this hand qualify for a beer? 



3 comments:

  1. Does Jun care?

    In any case, you cannot win a beer if you've misplayed the hand.

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  2. Nice hand. Am I right that South's revoke only cost his side one trick? At first glance it looks like it should have cost him two, one for the revoke and one for giving an extra entry to dummy

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    Replies
    1. It only cost one trick - if there's no revoke then declarer doesn't lose a diamond, but does lose a heart at the end. Hard to argue that there should be more tricks transferred, as declarer had already lost two tricks when the revoke happened, and made 11..

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