The club’s Saturday night duplicate was roaring along when Hard Luck Louie found himself at the helm on today’ s deal. The session had been going quite well and Louie was optimistic that he would best his rival, Lucky Larry, tonight.
Louie won the opening diamond lead with dummy’s ace and led the jack of spades, won perforce by East with the ace. East continued with the king of diamonds. Louie had no reason to think that West started with a singleton diamond, but he took the precaution of ruffing with his nine just in case. West over-ruffed with his 10 and shifted to a heart to the king and ace. Another high diamond from East promoted W est’ s eight of trumps into the setting trick and Louie had to accept down one. “6-1 diamonds and 4-1 trumps,” lamented Louie. “Why does everything happen to me?”
Lucky Larry played the same contract with the same start to the defense. Instead of ruffing the king of diamonds, however, Larry discarded his singleton heart. East continued with the queen of diamonds, ruffed by Larry with the nine and over- ruffed with the 10. West had no way to reach his partner for another diamond lead. Larry ruffed the heart shift, drew the rest of the trumps and claimed. Well played!