• 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.