A sparkling aperitif

We’ve left Lille now that Canadian interest is no more, and have checked into a new hotel in Normandy for a few days sightseeing before heading home next Tuesday.  While killing time before going to dinner tonight, we logged into BBO and were lucky enough to catch this deal — the final one of today’s action.

I had watched this board at a couple of other tables, and most pairs arrived safely in 6♠ .  One or two flirted with 7♠ , which gave rise to some discussion among the commentators as to the best line of play in that contract.  In the end, it comes down to guessing who has the ♦K — you can either finesse in diamonds or pitch a diamond on a club and take the ruffing finesse — or taking a heart finesse followed by ruffing a heart in the short hand. There are some slight extra chances, but that’s basically it.

In the Italy-Poland match, however, Italy’s Duboin and Sementa were even more ambitious.  After a 2NT-4♦ (transfer) start, I don’t know precisely what their auction meant, since nothing was alerted or explained on BBO.  However, it seems to me that Sementa’s 7♥ was probably intended as a final transfer to 7♠. Duboin may have thought he was being asked to pick a final contract, or maybe he just thought they had plenty of tricks and notrump would be safer; but, whatever the reasoning, they came to rest not in 7♠ but in 7NT. 

North must have been looking for a safe lead, and was reluctant to lead a singleton spade, although I believe that Duboin had superaccepted spades, so leading one wasn’t likely to do much harm. On a spade lead, declarer really has no option but to finesse diamonds and hope for the best — which will not help him on this layout.  Even a diamond lead will probably do no harm — that’s only the twelfth trick, and declarer would surely never think North had led away from the king: he would just finesse in diamonds rather than in hearts.  However, this North chose an innocuous-looking, but ultimately fatal, heart.

Giorgio Duboin won this trick with the heart queen (South did not cover of course), and took stock: he now had twelve tricks, and options.  Time for some card-reading. It was easy to figure out that North probably had at least one club honor to protect, and after cashing the queen and king of spades, the singleton spade was revealed too.  Surely he had not underled the ♥K, which gave rise to a ‘Restricted Choice’ inference that he could well have the ♦K, else he might have led a diamond instead of a heart.  Other things being equal, North was roughly twice as likely to have the ♦K as South.  

Perhaps North was unfortunate to be defending 7NT against one of the world’s best declarers.  In any event, Duboin read the position correctly, and proceeded to cash both red-suit aces — a double Vienna Coup — then run all the spades, executing a double squeeze with clubs as the central suit.  As one commentator remarked, God obviously gave East the ♦9 for a reason!

A pretty deal to end the session with.  We strolled across the road to a meal of Galettes Seguin followed by Crepes Normandie, washed down with local cider, and raised a glass to Signor Duboin for providing such a sparkling aperitif!