Bridge | 30 August 2018

All the best players today are technically excellent in card play. They know all the odds and end plays to bring home their contract or thwart the opposition so the important differences are often in the bidding. Finding the best game, slam or partscore, played from the right hand, is vital. But there is another quality that separates great and genius, a quality you can’t learn, and that is imagination. The gift of seeing the whole picture and finding a winning line which is not necessarily technically conventional. Geir Helgemo is widely acknowledged as the world’s No. 1 supremo in solving problems imaginatively. Today’s hand comes from his book Bridge with Imagination.
 
In response to partner’s lead-directing double, West led ♣4. At the other table, with a similar auction and the same lead, East covered dummy’s ♣3 with the 6 and promptly went down. If declarer won with the king the defence would be able to cash four clubs when East got in with ♠A.