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Today’s hand had an interesting twist. It was played by the young Bulgarian Julian Stefanov who came up with a rather clever ruse to try and guarantee his contract — which rather confused me I must admit.
West led the ♥J, and declarer went into the tank. What was he thinking about? It seemed obvious: win the Heart in hand and set up the Diamonds. Stefanov, however, was planning ahead: after the defence returns a Heart, he has to find discards on six rounds of Diamonds, which means that he has to bare one of his black Kings leaving him in a position where he has to read the hand very accurately not to go down in the endgame. After a couple of minutes, he did something that had certainly not occurred to me. He won the Heart in hand, played the ◆Q and, naturally, overtook it in dummy. Then he played another top Diamond and discarded the Ace of Hearts from hand — looking like a man in need of an entry! After this, the defence was not going to play another Heart, come what may. West shifted to the ♠♠Q, which was allowed to run to South’s King. Stefanov then produced the ♥6 and claimed nine tricks!
Neat!
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