Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Who's zooming who?

Went to Stockholm last week (on work) and did some practise with Frederic. We're going to Montegrotto in Italy next week and really need to get a lot of boards together.

One evening we practised against the new Open Team partnership of Cullin-Upmark. They got the nod for the 3rd spot on the Swedish team for the Bermuda Bowl this fall in Shanghai just a day earlier. They needed to be *roughed up* ;-)

I opened 2H showing 9-12 w/6+suit on AQx/QT87xx/Kx/Jx all white. Partner invited and I had to play 4H. Johan Upmark led a 3rd/5th diamond:

KTxx
Kxx
Txx
A9x

AQx
QT87xx
Kx
Jx

I covered with the T and ace to the right followed by club Queen (2nd/4th) after about a minute. Diamonds looked as 4-4. I took the ace immediately and played a spade to the ace with the 9 on my right (upside-down) and small to the left.
Heart to the 9-K-A followed by club and more clubs dropping the T to the left. Clubs looked 5-3 and I was sure spades wasn't 5-1 either way as no spade lead or trick 2 shift.

Not wanting to play for hearts to break immediately, I decided - after some thought, to play a spade to dummy first and lead hearts up. This resulted in J - K - x. There it was, the final clue - and I finessed in hearts to pick up Jx.

Johan knew it was about the trump suit and played spade J from Jx to look like 2-2-4-5 instead of 3-1-4-5. But, I "knew" that spades were 3-3 from the 9 played in trick 3 but couldn't be 100% sure about how the minor-suits broke. Therefore the J play, when I knew he had another one, was a sure "tell".

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