Tags Bridge Nationals bidding play  Chip Martel  Lew Stansby  Larry Cohen  David Berkowitz  Open BAM  CA  San Francisco  Winning the San Francisco BAM part 2  bridge hand 

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Two interesting hands on the way to winning the teams in San Francisco.

By chip  Featured Noozer
Published: 29 December 2007 03:57 pm

- My team won the Open Board A Match (BAM) teams at the recent San Francisco North American Bridge Championships (see prior noozit article). This is an excellent event with many good teams competing. We played an interesting pair of hands against one such good team the first day,

This first deal was mostly about bidding:


After a standard 2/1 start, was a strong cue-bid (3N would have shown mild slam interest). asked  for key cards and asked for specific kings. 5n showed the and the and grand slam interest. On the lead my partner Lew Stansby won the A and led to the , LHO playing the 9. There was now a 2 way finesse for the , but playing the next was clearly indicated. A good player would play the from J9xx to give delarer a losing option. Since J9xx is 3 times as likely as stiff 9, its better to assume J9xx. In addition, if LHO has J9xx you have 13 easy tricks by ruffing a diamond in hand. If you played RHO for J9xx, (by playing to the next) you would still need some luck in spades for your 13 trick.

Unfortunately, the was singleton, so we went down. Spades were Jxxxx offside so the slam was unmakable except by double-dummy play. The good news was that the good pair at the other table also went down one in for a push.

The second deal gave me a chance to declare an interesting hand. 2N was a limit raise and a game try. Some care was needed to make 10 tricks against a bad trump split. The basic plan is to score dummy's 4 trumps and 3 ruffs in my hand. Those 7 trump tricks and my 3 side suit winners make 10. I ducked the   lead, won the trump shift in dummy to play a diamond to the K and A. LHO led a spade to my ace, and I could now play A and ruff a club,  ruff a spade, lead to the , ruff a diamond, ruff a club, leaving:


I could need lead either of dummy's cards to score my . Note that playing the second round of trumps before ruffing a diamond to hand guarded against LHO being 4-2-2-5 (so might overruff the diamond). Note also that if RHO has two diamonds he is sure to have at least 4 clubs (at worst 4-3-2-4) so can't throw away his last club  when the third diamond is led from dummy.

What was our reward for bidding this good game and playing carefully to make? Another push. they bid and made also.