Waterloo Region Record

The Bridge Column

GREED IS GOOD

A player’s hand can come to life when his long suit gets raised. South in today’s deal was Egyptian star Walid el-Ahmady. We understand his excitement when his seven-card suit got raised, but he overdid it somewhat when he drove to slam. Still, el-Ahmady is an expert, and he plays by the expert’s creed: “Just because a contract is hopeless is no reason to go down in it.” El-Ahmady won the opening heart lead with his ace and realized that there was no legitimate play for his contract. Was there a deceptive play available? El-Ahmady found a diabolical line of play and caught just the right lie of the cards to give it a chance. He cashed the ace of spades and then led the jack of spades. He overtook this with dummy’s king and led a low diamond from dummy. Put yourself in East’s position. East couldn’t know that declarer had a seven-card spade suit. It looked to East that declarer had a six-card suit and had misguessed the queen of trumps. Assuming his partner had a trump trick, he couldn’t afford to lose to the singleton king of diamonds. South would then ruff a heart in dummy and lead the queen of diamonds, ruffing out his ace. It looks like a terrible play, but we have sympathy. East rose with his ace and great was the fall thereon, as the late Edgar Kaplan liked to say.*

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2022-01-20T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-01-20T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://waterloorecord.pressreader.com/article/281895891616373

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