Great Defense

Playing with or against world class players creates interesting moment and feeling. I had an opportunity to play with Indonesian national player, Taufik Asbi in Alex Frans Memorial Invitation Pair on April 2006. Previously, we played together when Taufik was still a student in Bandung, a nice city around 180 km east Jakarta.

This board will show the interesting moments, both in defensive play, the hardest part of bridge game because of both defensive player are involved.

The role play on this board was Ferdy Waluyan, previous famous Indonesian national player. This board showed Ferdy's capability in defense to make life difficult for declarer.

Contact died at low level 2H with no opposition bidding, North 1D, South 1H and North raised it. West opening lead was ♣3. Below are the complete distribution.

	Dummy
	♠ A1043
	♥ K854
	♦ A94
	♣ Q4
West		East/Ferdy
♠ K86		♠ J972
♥ 32		♥ Q96
♦ KJ75		♦ 10863
♣ K1083		♣ A2
	Declarer
	♠ Q5
	♥ AJ107
	♦ Q2
	♣ J9765

East, Ferdy won the first club, and switched to ♦8, ♦Q, ♦K and ♦A. Next club won by west who cashed the ♦J and continued diamond. Declarer ruff and run ♥J, but East won with ♥Q. A critical moment arrived. Let's think for a while. Knowing that declarer hold 2425 along with bad spade position for defenders, Ferdy returned a killing defense double void diamond. This is the only defense which might defeat the contract.

Declarer will setup club on heart attack. Spade return, playing the correct card will make 9 tricks. Event when declarer played the wrong spade, declarer will still land their contract by setup his long club and used their trump as entry.

With diamond return, declarer lost his control. He can not setup club anymore. It needs a careful play to fulfill the contract. There are two ways, correct placing the ♠K or the ♥9. If you placed ♠K in East, after discard club in the hand, ruff in dummy, you may play spade to Queen. As the cards lie, this plan was fail. If you place the ♠K with West, after ruffing the diamond in dummy, draw all trumps and play ♣J and club, throw West in. For all declarer who count the high card point on both defenders, you may find that both of them may have the ♠K.

There is another way to land the contact by placing the ♥9 in the West. After ruffing the diamond in dummy, discarding spade in his own hand, Taufik played ♠A and spade ruff. club ruff with ♥K and another spade ruff. He continued with club to be ruffed with ♥8, en-passan. Unfortunately, East hold the ♥9 so contract failed. Congratulation for defenders.