Bridge

Counting, counting and counting are the three most important things to consider, whether you are playing in your local bridge club duplicate or the Bermuda Bowl. Counting declarer’s tricks when you are defending is hard when you are very busy counting your own hand and, when dummy goes down, you can start to work out partner’s point count and distribution until you have enough information if you have a critical decision to make.

This deal from the European Transnational Championships in Budapest earlier this year saw one declarer do everything possible to prepare for his ‘crucial decision’. He forgot only one thing: he was playing against one of the strongest partnerships in the world – the Rimstedt brothers.

West started with the ♠️3, won by East with the Ace, and a small Spade was returned. South played safe when he put in the 8, and the defence cleared the Spades while dummy discarded a Diamond and a Heart.

Having won the Spade, South paused for a while. He’d been a bit lucky in the bidding and 3NT was a great spot; it would be a shame to mis-guess Clubs if they’re 3-0. He decided that he could afford to cash one round of Hearts just to see if anything interesting happened, and it did – East dropped the Queen!

Now, assuming East isn’t 6-6 in the pointed suits (in which case he probably would have made more noise) he’s the only one who could have 3 Clubs, so South confidently asked for the ♣️K from dummy, and got the shock of his life when East discarded. One down!

Poor Declarer was left looking like a squashed lemon when Micke Rimstedt chose to discard a Heart on the ♣️K…!