Thursday, January 29, 2009

Sapan's magic

Sapan Desai is a star player and probably one of the few in that age group in India who can play competitive bridge at the world level. Prajwal witnessed his awesome game play skills on BBO.
Here is the deal.
Plan your play on the lead of Heart Q.



Even on the friendly looking lead, there don't seem to be enough tricks.
Looks like the lead is from Qx, so even if we guess the spades correctly (which is easy) we are one trick short.

Here is the full deal.

Here is how the play went.
Heart Q to King.
Spade to the King
Low club from dummy. RHO plays the T and then King; LHO follows with 4 and 5.
Low spade from RHO. (remember the Dbl)
Sapan perfectly chose to finesse. Reaching this position....

Now the crucial part of the play.
Sapan cashed Ace of diamond
Spade to the Ace. ( RHO's distribution is now known 3=4=2=4 or 3415?)
Heart Jack, all following.
low heart to Ace, ( LHO discarding a small club)
last heart is ruffed in hand (LHO pitches another club)
now, small diamond! from hand
LHO must have thought declarer has the Queen of Diamonds and is playing for his partner to have Kx and played the Ten. Too bad, RHO won the Q and was endplayed into playing a club allowing the trumps to score seperately.
The crack is in cashing Ace of diamond as early as its safe making it difficult for RHO to unblock. If he had played the trumps and hearts and then tried this, RHO will figure out to unblock.
Bravo Sapan!

Prajwal and I think its a masterpiece indeed. But Vinoth disagrees, dismissing as a simple play. We are all eager to see him pull out such feats. :P

2 comments:

Prajwal said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Prajwal said...

One more advantage of this play comes when declarer is holding Diamond Queen and Diamond King is offside.
The normal play is Diamond Ace and then low Diamond to Queen.
But when u play low Diamond from hand then ur LHO will think that his partner has Queen (because u didnt play low Diamond to Q) and go up with King. U will score trick for Q even when King is offside. If Kx is onside, u always score Q by playing in this manner.

If LHO counts properly, then he should figure out the correct defense i.e going up with King. RHO has shown 10 HCP ( Club Ace, King , Jack and Spade Q - 10 HCP). For his double he is marked with Diamond Queen