香港橋藝論壇

[WW Cho]

IMP, both vulnerable, you hold:
J2 QT654 AQ52 K9
You open 1 and two passes follow. RHO bid 1 and you pass. LHO raises to 4 which becomes the final contract.

You try a small lead and find dummy with the following collection:
A84 AJ82 J A7532

Declarer play the 2 from dummy and your partner follows with 3 and declarer wins with 9. He then plays trump K and trump 6 to dummy's A and plays a third round of trump to closed hand and wins it with 9. Please plan your play from here.

[Alan Sze]

unblock K and hoping partner could get in by Q or J to play .
_________________
Alan B...

PABF: Youth: 1997 (Hong Kong); Open: 2001 (Singapore); 2005 (Korea - Seoul); 2006 (China - Shanghai); 2007 (Indonesia - Bandung); Olympiad: 2000 (Netherlands - Maastricht); 2004 (Turkey - Istanbul); World Mind Sports Games: 2008 (Beijing - China); Bermuda Bowl: 2001 (France - Paris);

[WW Cho]

Alan, do you mean that you will discard K on the 3rd round trump. Please clarify.

[Alan Sze]

[WW Cho]

We have to sketch the hand declarer hold in order to defend. Seems that declarer has only 4 trumps, likely he will have 4 tricks too and A for his 9th trick. You have to discard 2 times on the 3rd and 4th rounds of trump. You have to assume that partner must hold at least something in and/or something in .

Your discard of K means that you must hope partner holding Q and declarer likely to hold the K then. You will be end played for certain after declarer cash his 9 winners and throw you in with the .

The answer will become more apparent that if your partner really holds Q and declarer holds K. In order to prevent being end played in , you have to keep all your intact and you cannot discard any . So you have to first discard your 2 low on the 3rd and 4th round of trumps. Declarer will then play a from hand and you must rise with your k and declarer has no answer to your defense then.

Declarer holds: KQ96 K97 K763 T6

The eventual winner, Bobby Levin, didn't solve this problem at the table (they were playing at the last session and closely chasing after the leader, H-H). He did discard 2 and keep to his 5th but he failed to unblock K when declarer tried a small from hand. He must feel very upset when he was so close to the correct answer but he had the happy ending to win the event finally.