MA0 EINA
BRIDGE
Take five
Andrew Robson.
THE summer festival of bridge at Brighton grows in popularity and players as far afield as Bangladesh, Iceland and. Indonesia attended. Though the major honours were shared between Italy and. Indonesia, it was a London pair who won one of the minor events. A spectacular opening lead boosted their chances: Dealer North North South Vulnerable
South West
14 5+ pass pass
North East
pass pass pass 54 West, Ian Pagan, pre-empted to the limit with 5+, which would doubtless have silenced many Norths. Not this one, who clearly had not heard the motto The five level belongs to the opponents.' But with tC) sitting favourably it would appear that declarer should make 54, just losing VA and a 4. That is until West led +8. East, Ainit Badiani, played +J and then there was a pause in the play. Not because East was thinking what to lead, but because he assumed South had taken the first trick. Eventually he realised that his jack had won and he immediately worked out why his partner had underled +AKQ — he must have a void, clearly in hearts. East cashed VA and led a second V for West to ruff — one down.
Had East been defending 44 he would have to be more careful. Needing a * trick In addition, he would have to hope declarer has the same hand as above without +K. He would have to return a low V (not the ace) at trick two. Partner would trump and return a *, establishing the hypothetical • trick before declarer could discard his los- ing on the fifth V. Were you wondering why West led +8 rather than, say +2? It was a suit-prefer- ence signal for partner to return the higher ranking suit, hearts.
Previous page
