Wednesday 2 October 2013

JOHNNY SEES THE DANGER...........

The other night I witnessed a great mind at work ,  when Johnny Supremo set about defeating a 4S contract. South had opened the bidding 3S , doubled by Johnny sitting West, and then 4S from North which ended the auction. 
Holding Ax....AKQx.....QJ10.....Q109x ,  every West in the room kicked off with K of hearts, and with dummy ( North ) revealing Q9....J10xx.....xxxx.....AKx ,  there were still 5 outstanding hearts to be accounted for. When East revealed an odd number in the suit , it was fairly obvious that declarer was sitting there with a losing doubleton.
At trick 2 the Ace of hearts was played confirming the 4-4-3-2 distribution in that suit. At this point all the Wests decided against continuing hearts for fear of setting up dummy's jack, and so they all switched to queen of diamonds as the logical choice.....but now 4S tick for declarer appeared on every line of the score-sheet . For when the diamond Queen was taken by declarer with his Ace, it was time to set about clearing trumps in two rounds, putting West again on lead. A second diamond was routinely ruffed by South, who simply played out all the remaining spades. Every West was forced to squirm in his seat , squeezed to death , being unable to guard both hearts and clubs.
But not at Johnny's table. He could see the pending squeeze a mile off.   If Declarer held 3 clubs in the Jack ( which in fact  he had ), then his best line of defence was to simply remove the heart menaceAt trick 3 he continued with the queen of hearts , which was gleefully ruffed by declarer. But as soon as spades were played, Johnny rose with the Ace to play a fourth heart. This was ruffed by partner with his remaining trump, and although the inevitable over-ruff took place, declarer was condemned to concede a losing club.
What vision...... what great defence..... what a player. And if Johnny Supremo isn't nominated for the Bridge Hall Of Fame , then all I can say is.... there ain't any justice left in this bizarre world of bridge !

( Declarer's hand was KJ10xxxx....xx....A....Jxx )




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