jan1DIGITAL

ירחון ההתאגדות הישראלית לברידג' 46 Dealer West, Vul All AQ94 QT KT95 T73 J73 K862 K62 AJ98 AQ72 864 A62 K4 T5 7543 J3 QJ985 West North East South Versace Birman Lauria Fohrer 1 ♦ Pass 1 ♥ Pass 1NT Pass 2NT Pass 3NT Pass Pass Natural bidding led to the expected 3NT contract, which turned out to be a duel between David Birman (North) and Alfredo Versace (West). A spade lead would have allowed declarer to win two spade tricks and made it easy for him, but Birman cleverly led the club seven (second best from a weak suit). Fohrer (South) won the first trick with the club jack, and he realized that setting up the club suit would be useless without a side entry. Therefore he switched to the diamond three. However, this move tipped his hand and allowed the Italian world champion to conclude that South had a very weak hand with five clubs. Versace played low at trick two, and Birman won the trick with the diamond nine before switching back to clubs. Declarer won with dummy's king perforce and led the diamond eight: jack-queen-king. Please note that Versace created a tenace ( ♦ A7 ( preventing a diamond continuation.What to do now with the North cards? Birman found the best solution, a deceptive heart queen – forcing declarer to guess the whereabouts of the heart ten. However, Versace was up to the challenge. He won the heart ace and continued a heart to the king. He knew that North held the spade ace as well as the remaining diamonds, and proceeded to make nine tricks by a strip- squeeze! Next came the club ace (a very bold move justified by the defenders' failure to continue clubs) and a small spade, won by dummy's king. Two high hearts from dummy completed the squeeze. Had North discarded down to ♠A ♦T5, he would have been endplayed by a small spade. However, Birman had not given up! He discarded his spade ace and queen. This would have beaten the contract in case South held the spade jack, but it was not to be. Agreat defense was met with outstanding declarer play by a world champion. Ultimately, only one of them could prevail - a pity, because both of them deserved to win that board.