The Brits have done brilliantly in Icelandair’s annual bridge festival in Reykjavik and this year was no different. The winners of the two-day pairs tournament were the Anglo–Bulgarian partnership of Rumen Trendafilov, who has played many times on the Bulgarian Open team, and Nevena Senior, who has won two World Championships (among many other titles) playing on the English Ladies Team.
On today’s deal, Rumen played carefully and accurately to land his spade partscore.
West led Ace and another diamond to declarer’s King. East’s double had shown precisely four spades, which cleared up the distribution of the trump suit. At trick three Rumen led a low spade to the ten, losing to the Jack. Back came a club, West winning the ace and returning the two to dummy’s Jack. Rumen led the ♠8 to the nine and Queen and now needed to find a second entry to dummy to finesse again in spades.
The only way that declarer can get to dummy under his own steam is to ruff a club, but then there would be no trump left to lead for the finesse, so he had to enlist the aid of the defence. He cashed the ♣King, necessary if the suit was dividing three–three as this would extract West’s club exit card, and then led his heart. West won the ace but, down to nothing but red cards, had no option but to present the lead to dummy. When he did so, Rumen could lead the three of spades to his seven, cash the ace of spades to draw the last trump, and claim the remainder, making nine tricks for + 140 and an almost 80 per cent score on the board.
Pretty classy play.
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