Great Hands I Wish I Had Played
by Raymond and Sally Brock

BT Batsford, £10.99, ISBN No. 0 7134 8798 4

First the bad news. In the opinion of your reviewer, charging £10.99 for a book of 128 pages is excessive. The good news is that the book is entertaining with an exceptionally high standard of analysis, as is only to be expected given the authorship. Most of the hands are declarer play problems in the “over the shoulder” style, though there are a few defensive ones as well. Virtually all are from actual play with the provenance stated, a major plus point to my mind. Indeed, the only composed hand suffers in comparison.

Time and again, the point is made that declarer could have been defeated had the defence done something else, and the hands where the defence was perfect are in a minority. Was it not the late Rixi Markus who said that about 90% of the contracts she had made should have gone down?

The hand which follows, however, features no errors by the defence, though arguably the bidding should have been different. South plays in 3NT after the unopposed auction: 1 – 1 – 1NT – 2 – 2 – 2 – 3NT, where the 2 bid asked whether South had either three spades or five hearts. There is a lot to be said for a simple raise of 1NT to game, not giving East the opportunity (not taken in practice) to double for a club lead: even with a 5-3 spade fit, 3NT could well be the best contract, and why give information to the defence?

	A J 10 9 7   8 7   K 9 8   9 7 2
K 8 5 2   Q 2   J 7 6 5 2   6 5		Q 3   10 6 4 3   Q 10   K Q J 10 8
	6 4   A K J 9 5   A 4 3   A 4 3

The declarer, German World Champion Sabine Auken, received a diamond lead to West’s queen. Appreciating that it would be a mistake to duck, allowing the defence to switch to clubs, she won and played a spade to the jack and queen. East returned her remaining diamond and this time declarer did duck: since West could not afford to overtake, East remained on lead and played a high club, once again ducked. East continued clubs, and Sabine won the second round, took a second spade finesse and cashed the ace of the suit. When East discarded (a club) on the third round of spades, it was time to take stock.

On the play so far, West was known to have four spades, five diamonds (surely) and at least two clubs, probably exactly two. This meant that West could have no more than two hearts and it was impossible for the heart suit to come in for the necessary four tricks. Although a possible line, undiscussed in the book, is to play East for both Q and 10 (declarer finesses 9 and exits with a club, forcing East to take the second heart finesse for declarer), Sabine correctly concluded that West had no more clubs.

Accordingly, she played a fourth round of spades: upon winning, West had to play a diamond, won perforce in dummy. When the last spade was cashed, East had to reduce to three cards, one of which was a winning club (otherwise dummy’s nine would have been good), and so she could only retain two hearts. Knowing that the hearts were now 2-2, Sabine dropped West’s doubleton queen for the vital ninth trick. As the authors point out, this is a fine example of how an expert approaches a hand.

Richard Fleet

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