Hand of the Week #12

We get a bonus bridge game this week -- the second heat of the annual Worldwide Simultaneous Pairs is happening Saturday afternoon at 1:00 at the Senior Center.

To celebrate the occasion, you also get a bonus Hand of the Week this week. It is a particularly taxing hand from the Tuesday 15 April 2008 club game. Ivan got a chance to inflict a bottom on me, spotting a chance to use a rare defensive play against me to put me down one more than everyone else in the room:

My partner and Ivan's partner both passed, so I opened 5 in third seat with favourable vulnerability, and Ivan doubled for penalty. With only between 6 and 6 1/2 playing tricks, my hand really was only worth a 4 opening, but I stretched to bid one more to shut Ivan out of being able to bid 4 of a major. Here is what I saw as declarer:

	A 7 6 2 J 2 7 2 Q J 9 5 3
	Q 5 4 7 K Q J T 6 5 3 8 2

Sacrificing against 4 looks right, as long as I don't go down four in 5X. But other pairs will be in 5 too, so the difference between down two and down three could be important.

The defense started with two round of hearts. I trumped the second round and pulled trump. Ivan's partner held up to the second round of diamonds, and switched to a club. Ivan won with the A, and had the key decision to make.

If he had simply returned a club to cash Marge's K, that would be the defense's last trick: I would be able to win the A and throw away my losing spades on the good QJ, and go down only two.

Instead, Ivan led his king of spades! This throws away the king, and sets up my queen -- but it also forces me to use my last entry to the dummy while Marge still has her king of clubs, and prevents me from ever setting up the club suit. I went down three doubled in 5X, losing one spade, one heart, one diamond, and two clubs. Others were allowed to take 9 tricks in diamonds - and to add insult to injury, one pair went down in 4. I got a cold bottom thanks to Ivan cleverly cutting me off from the dummy.

This play, "wasting" an honour to force an entry out of the dummy, was named the Merrimac Coup back in the days of whist, after a freighter that was sunk to block the entrace to the Havana harbor during the Spanish-American War.

The whole hand:

Dealer North EW vul	A 7 6 2 J 2 7 2 Q J 9 5 3
J 9 3 Q T 9 8 6 A 4 K T 7		K T 8 A K 5 4 3 9 8 A 6 4
	Q 5 4 7 K Q J T 6 5 3 8 2