Bridge Base Online is a pretty amazing website where one can play, practice, or watch bridge. All the major international and ACBL events are on VuGraph which gets better and better, you can now get an audio and text feed of the commentary which is usually really good.

I watched a lot of the Spingold Teams from the Las Vegas Nationals mainly because Allan Graves was in the final playing against the superstars that had been brought to Monaco by sponsor Pierre Zimmerman, who partnered Frank Multon, Helgemo, Helness, Nunes and Fantoni on any team, which is a frightening thought and all are brilliant and worth watching. They were beaten however, despite a huge first quarter lead. Congrats to Richard Schwartz, Ron Schwartz, Allan Graves, Lotan Fisher, Boye Brogeland and Espen Lindqvist — the bridge throughout was of a really high standard despite a few glaring errors clearly through tiredness.

This may have been the hand of the final, even though both pairs reached a grand slam on exactly the same bidding sequence, both took the same line of play, and both went down one.

North Dealer, Both Vulnerable

(Spades / Hearts / Diamonds / Clubs)

North: KQ1084 / AK103 / AK65 / None

East: 972 / 742 / J74 / QJ82

South: AJ / 865 / 1098 / AK1074

West: 653 / QJ9 / Q32 / 9653

The Bidding:

North South

1S 2C

2H 2S

5C 5H

7S

5 Clubs was Exclusion Blackwood which shows a void and asks partner to show Key cards outside the void suit. First step none, second step one, etc. Both declarers bid the grand and dummy was a disappointment with the Club ace king not as valuable as two red queens.

East led the usual trump and declarer now had to commit, discard two Hearts or two Diamonds on the Clubs and then play RHO for the queen — jack in the suit not discarded. Declarer would use this entry for the first finesse and the next entry for the second finesse.

As you can see discarding Diamonds and going after Hearts works on this hand, but both declarers did the opposite — no swing. So, did they do the right thing on the percentages? Absolutely.

For Hearts to succeed RHO needs to have exactly QJx, for Diamonds to succeed QJx would work but also what would work is RHO holding QJxxx or QJxx as long as LHO held the singleton 7 in the first case or 7x in the second. Try it. The absolutely frightening thing is that both declarers were brilliant enough to work that out and were thus persuaded to take the losing line. Wonderful hand.

PS: On the next hand North, having just gone down in a grand picked up 6, none, A65, AK10987542 and heard LHO open 1 Spade, partner bid 3 Hearts and RHO bid 4 Spades. Over to you.

Both declarers bid 6 Clubs which was one down opposite 87, AJ108632, KJ84 when the Clubs didn’t break. Wait, at one table the bidding didn’t stop there and the Monaco player saved in 6 Spades down 500 and 11 precious IMPS to the Schwartz Team. Don’t you love this game.