| 45th GENERALI European Bridge Championships, Arona, Tenerife, Canary Islands | Saturay, 23 June 2001 |
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Some Belgian Chocolates By Fara Bigdeli, NPC Belgium is actually doing well in the open
series.
2ª was a weak overcall and 4ª a general cue-bid, showing a three-card fit in diamonds (with four diamonds the bid would have been 4¨). Only Zvi can explain 5ª, but when Guy proposed to play the slam in clubs, Zvi chose diamonds because a ruff at the short trump side would be needed. The spade ruff was indeed the twelfth trick. Valerie Carcassonne is the lady bridge phenomenon of Belgium. In
the match against Germany she combined with her husband Alain
Labaere to defeat 5¨.
Alain led the ace of Spades and switched to the eight of clubs. Valerie took and returned a heart to defeat the contract in a minimum of time. Alain Kaplan is forming a solid pair with Guy Polet. He stole a
borderline 3NT against Germany.
Alain, East, took the Heart lead with dummy's queen. He immediately played a club to his queen. When South took this, that was the end of the defence. He took the club continuation and played a diamond. North continued hearts, ducked. After another heart, Alain played another diamond for his contract. Hand of the day By Svend Novrup When this hand was shown on VuGraph there were two typical results. East-West had bid and won 3NT, usually on a heart lead; or East-West had gone down in 3NT on a diamond lead. The VuGraph results' table which quotes the contracts, leads, and scores seemed to imply that it was impossible to make the contract on a diamond lead. Yet that was just, what Vladimir Mihov of Bulgaria did in the Open Series match against Israel. On yesterday's hand of the day Mihov was on the receiving end when Yoram Aviram shone against Bulgaria. This was his revenge in the same match.
Sitting West, he received the lead of ¨9 showing zero or two higher diamonds. He ducked it but had to win the diamond continuation with the king. A heart to the queen lost to the king, (another way to make it is to play the queen of spades from hand at this point. Editor) and a third diamond went to the ace. Mihov now cashed ©A, finessed in clubs with, cashed §A and ©J before playing a third club end-playing North to lead away from the ªK. With two spades and the establish club he had his nine tricks. Very well played. Looking For Mr Smug From time to time it is more comfortable to have Mr Smug at your disposal, the famous practical and ignorant character described by S.J. Simon (Why You Lose At Bridge), rather than an expert who would look for an endplay Mr Smug would never be able to think of.
To our dear Mr Smug, at the helm in this slam, it would never have occurred to go for a line of play other than first try the spade finesse and than play a diamond to the queen. These two simple maneuvers, the only ones at Mr Smug´s disposal, would have brought declarer´s tally to 12 tricks: two spades, two diamonds and eight trumps including two ruffs in dummy. As it happened, the East seat was occupied by Lauria who had far better weapons at his disposal than Mr Smug and thus was able to look more deeply into the position. South led the §A and: "You can also make the hand with the ¨K in South - that´s what Lauria said to himself - if you can reach this finale:"
"Yes, I really think I´, going to play for it. After all, North has suggested to defend by bidding 5§. He need not hold any defensive tricks. What is more, it´s an elegant line of play (this was not Lauria´s thought, but just an interpretation by the writer of this story)…" As you can see, as a matter of prevention the ¨K had crossed from South to North, so the more elegant line quickly changed into the losing one… One Slip is Enough against the Senior Fox By Alex Montwill, Ireland Joe MacHale played in his first Europeans for Ireland in Helsinki in 1953. Almost half a century later in the second round Senior's match against Wales he showed he had lost none of his sharpness.
West led the ace of diamonds and continued with another diamond, which MacHale ruffed. He played a club to the king and a small spade from dummy. East rose with the ace and switched to the nine of hearts. Thinking he could keep his king of trumps for later, West ducked this to dummy's ten. But there was no later, at least no opportunity to do something useful later. Joe played a club to the queen, ruffed another diamond and kept
exiting with spades. West had to ruff his partner's winners, while
Joe waited patiently with AQ of trumps. Eventually he made all five
of his trumps plus two clubs and one spade for a useful score of
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