Local Bridge with Myrnie McLaughlin
Published 12:00 am Sunday, August 13, 2017
Third Hand Play
Your partner is on lead against a NT contract and you as third hand to play, must be ready to make an intelligent play to further your chances to defeat opponents’ contract. If partner’s lead is not from a sequence, or the highest card in your suit, and he knows and uses the 4th from longest and strongest rule, then you can use the Rule of 11 to make a decision as to which card to play from your hand. This is how it goes. Let’s suppose he leads an 8. Subtract 8 from 11 and you get 3. There are 3 cards in that suit higher than the one he led. By the time you are required to play, you can see the cards in “dummy” and your hand. You can count how many of those 3 higher cards you can see and then deduce what cards are in declarer’s hand. It could be that your partner’s lead is the highest if declarer plays low from dummy. This mathematical trick can be a great boon to your success.
We had 7 tables in play at our August 4th Evergreen game. Winning N/S 1st Ruth Bowles and Marie Pugh, 2nd Becky Creekmore and Pat Macon, 3rd Patsy Reynolds and Betsy Bare; E/W 1st Margaret and Chuck Rimer, 2nd Judy Gealy and Fern Albracht, 3rd Toni Iossi and Betty Bills.
Featured is board #13 from this game. All vulnerable North dealer
NORTH:S J 2
H Q 7 5 3
D 7 6 5
C K J 9 7
WEST: EAST:
S K T S A Q 7 6 4
H T 8 4 H —
D 9 8 2 D A K Q J T 4
C Q 8 6 5 4 C T 3
SOUTH:
S 9 8 5 3
H A K J 9 6 2
D 3
C A 2
Pat Macon and Becky Creekmore had the best N/S score bidding and making 4HS, while Joe O’Brien and Genny Mozolak bid and made 4DE for best E/W.
We once again had 6.5 tables at our Tuesday August 8th Women’s Club game. I am so glad this once seemingly dead game has revived. Winners were: N/S 1st Beth Shafer and Betty Bills, 2nd Betsy Bare and Dick Brisbin, 3rd Marie Pugh and Loyd Hill; E/W 1st Georgia Sorensen and John McLaughlin, 2nd Judy Hurder and Myrnie McLaughlin, 3rd Lawana Ford and Patsy Reynolds. Congratulations all. See you all again.