Mrs. Smith knew that, after this
auction, the lead of a major suit is usually called for. The ♠T was the obvious
choice and Declarer won that with Dummy’s Queen. Declarer now rattled off
Dummy’s Clubs, throwing from his hand two Diamonds, the
♥J
and the ♥K
(cunningly keeping the Heart Two!).
Next, Declarer cashed Spades and
the defense lapsed into auto-pilot mode. Declarer seemed to be out of Hearts
and so they both felt compelled to hang on to Diamonds. On the last Spade, Mr.
Smith, who by now was down to
♥A
and ♦KJ,
tossed away the ♥A,
wondering why Declarer was wasting time playing out the hand. At Trick 12,
Declarer cashed the ♦A,
and Mr. Smith leaned forward to claim Trick 13 with his
♦K.
But Declarer rather took the wind out of Mr. Smith’s sails by (somewhat
mischievously) announcing “The board’s good”. And so it was, as the sneaky
Heart Two was led to Dummy’s Three for the 13th trick!
In the post mortem the Smiths
exchanged ideas:
“Why didn’t you”
“Did you really think I”
“keep a Heart? No reason”
“pitched Nine-Eight-Seven”
“to keep the”
“and kept the Two?”
“Diamond Queen unless”
“I wish you would”
“you were planning”
“pay attention”
“to win it at Trick 14”
Back to Index