• eBulletins

A Day of Diamonds

Posted by David Stern on Thursday, 22 October 2015 at 12:09

This is one of those hands where you would rather be in seven diamonds than six.

The auction at the table I was watching was as follows:

 West North  East  South 
      Pass
 1 Pass  2♣  Pass 
 3 Pass  3♠  Pass 
4NT Pass 5 Pass
6 All Pass    

Perhaps West should have been more circumspect and considered other possibilities such as 6♠ but the contract was far from hopeless - ok it wasn't really that good even - you would need the diamonds to break 3-3 for starters which is 36% and would THEN make every time the ♣Q fell doubleton, South held the singleton king of spades or North held the ♠K - in total almost 70% of that 33% so around a 23% chance. 

Alas this time neither of those worked and declarer was doomed to failure. But let's imagine for a moment that you were in 7, a contract whose sole chances of success were the same 3-3 trump break PLUS ♣Q third in North's hand or a 6% chance - all of which worked here - bid and made at one table.

Here are the frequencies of this board

NS Score Freq
100 2
50 13
-150 1
-400 6
-420 4
-450 11
-460 5
-490 2
-520 1
-920 7
-940 1
-1440 1

Enjoy your bridge.