42 North Shore Towers Courier n May 2015 Contract Bridge CARD-READING by STEVE BECKER DUCK SOUP A shortage of entries to dummy is usually just as apparent to the defenders as it is to the declarer. When such a situation exists, the defenders should try to shape their play so as to take advantage of declarer’s limited communication with dummy. For example, consider this deal where South made three notrump, although proper defense would have defeated him. West led a club, and South won East’s ten with the king. Hearts was obviously the suit to attack, so declarer led a heart to the jack, East taking the queen. East returned a club, taken by declarer with the queen. South then forced out the ace of hearts and wound up making four notrump, scoring two spades, three hearts, two diamonds and three clubs. However, the contract would have been defeated had East allowed the jack of hearts to win at trick two! Presumably, declarer would next have taken a spade finesse. West would win and return a club. Regardless of how South proceeded from then on, he would finish a trick short, scoring just two spades, a heart, two diamonds and three clubs. The advantage of ducking the first heart is that declarer scores only one heart trick instead of three. This represents a difference of two tricks, or the difference between making eight tricks and 10. East should reason that if declarer has only two hearts -- a virtual certainty given West’s play of the three at trick two, indicating an odd number of hearts -- refusing to take the queen immediately will ultimately cut South off from dummy. He can see that dummy is critically short of entries and should defend accordingly. Usually, the holdup play is utilized by the declarer, but there are many cases -- and this is one of them -- where the defense can successfully adopt the same strategy. (c) 2015 King Features Syndicate Inc. Dr. Alison Hoffmann & Dr. Amy Sapodin ���������������������� ���� ��������������, T������������ ���� ���������������� ���������������� ���� �������������� �������������������� ���������������� �������������� ���������������������� 516-484-0811 North Shore Towers Bldg.3 -Arcade 5, Floral Park 1163 Willis Avenue Albertson / Roslyn GREENTHAL Property Sales, Inc./Property Management 272-40 Grand Central Pkwy. Floral Park, NY 11005 (718) 423-3130/(718) 423-3335 Fax: (718) 279-0162 www.nstowers.com
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