Patience is a virtue with discovery play

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With the summer break looming the tournament season is coming to a close and on Thursday night the winners of the Non Life Master Pairs will have been decided … results next week.

After the first session Peter Donnellan and Miodrag Novakovic have a 5½ matchpoint lead over Michael Tait and Jean Thompson with Annelies Scheland and Ann Proctor a further 8 ½ matchpoints behind … it will be interesting to see who prevails and whether Peter can build on his recent great showing in the Open Mixed Pairs.

I love this hand which came up in a recent teams event … declarer showed wonderful awareness and patience and was duly rewarded!

Board 3. E/W Vul. Dealer South

S-K106

H-A84

D-K102

C-K964

S-54 S- QJ982

H-K10732 H-Q5

D-85 D-QJ963

C-J873 C-2

S-A73

H-J96

D-A74

C-AQ105

South opened a 15-17 NT and North raised to 3NT… West led the heart 3. Declarer played low and East won the Queen and returned a heart to the 9 and 10 which declarer also ducked - the third heart was won by the Ace, East discarding a spade.

The hand is, in a way quite simple … declarer needs 4 club tricks! But how does he play the clubs in case they don’t split 3-2?

Declarer decided to explore …a club to the Ace and a low spade to the 10 was won by East with the jack … he won the spade return and now played a diamond to the ten!

East exited with a spade, West showing out … declarer now cashed two top diamonds and again West showed out on the third round clearly marking him with a 2-5-2-4 shape! It was now easy for declarer to cash the club queen and take the marked finesse against the Jack in the West hand - contract made !!

Would you have seen the discovery play? Would you have been that patient? I hope so ...

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