Bulletin

Savonian squeeze play (in English) author Zyxzewski, 10.12.2010 at 20.34.
Summary: Last board of the match Monte Carlo - SAVO

This was the last board in the NFL match between teams Monte Carlo (Estonia) and Savo (Finland).

       ♠654              West  North East  South
West   ♥AJT7             Pass  Pass  Pass  1♣
EW     ♦AT752            Pass  1♥    Pass  3♣
       ♣6                Pass  3♦    Pass  3♥
♠AQJ2         ♠T9873     Pass  3♠    Pass  4♣
♥84           ♥Q653      Pass  5♣    All pass
♦8643         ♦K9
♣Q52          ♣43
       ♠K
       ♥K92
       ♦QJ
       ♣AKJT987

North-South pair bid themselves to the game in clubs via natural methods (3♠ showed that North was afraid about spade situation and therefore not willing to bid 3NT).

West, who had listened to bidding well, started with ♠A, dropping declarer’s singleton king, and now he could have defeated the contract by switching to diamonds. There are certainly some signs suggesting that switch, but West continued with another spade, namely ♠Q – which later proved to be too revealing a card.

The declarer, Markku Seppänen from team SAVO (click link to see a team picture), ruffed and rejecting the possibility to cross to dummy for finessing in trumps, cashed his ♣A and K. When ♣Q refused to appear, he exited with third trump and West continued with a small spade.

Now West, who couldn’t open the bidding nor enter over 1♥, was marked with 8 points already – so finessing in diamonds did not look as a good prospect at all. Of course, in order to make his contract, declarer had still to find ♦Q and bring in the heart suit for four tricks to discard his losing diamond.

After figuring out or just guessing well that he would play East for that card, declarer continued with a diamond to ace (executing the Vienna Coup) and a small heart back to ♥9. Now all he had to do was to cash out his trumps, squeezing East in the red suits – well done!

Winning the game was worth 11 IMPs, when 3NT in other room failed by three tricks.

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Written by our guest author Lauri Naber (Zyxzewski) from Estonia who was kibitzing the match on Dec 9. Lauri also plays in the NFL team ESTONIA.

Savo (Savonia in English) is a district (and a dialect) in Eastern-Finland.

Savonian