A hand from Eilat, Red Sea Festival
I love reading bulletins - whatever the event. Imagine my surprise when I downloaded the Red Sea Festival bulletin and whilst I could see and understand the hand diagrams, the entire text was in Hebrew! Some sentences started with ? until I realised that they, like the Arabs, read and write from right to left! Yes... all very strange. I was intrigued with the hand depicted in this article and I asked a few of my Jewish patrons at my club whether they could assist me. They couldn't. So I asked Joe Israeli-Zindel of Johannesburg and sent him the pertinent page via email - sure enough he called me earlier and took great pains to tell me how the play went, and I am indebted to him for making sense of the article. Yes, it is a delightful hand, worthy of publication here.
The hand and the bidding follows. I forgot to ask what the vulnerability was, sorry.
Apparently the contract was 6from the East side and South led a trump. Declarer won in dummy then drew another using the king from hand.
QUIZ: How did he continue to make it?
SOLUTION:
Declarer played a small spade from his hand towards the queen at trick 3 - key play 1. Poor South was in a quandry - if he took the ace, declarer would obtain a vital discard of his losing heart on the
Q. He therefore ducked.
Key play 2: Now declarer played the
K -
He came back to hand with a trump, discarded a spade on the
Poor South was truly endplayed upon taking the spade ace.
A pretty little hand with a pretty lesson in timing.
Thanks, Joe!
Posted Dec 2016