Voluptua’s strip squeeze

It was the final round of a Swiss teams and, mirabile dictu, Voluptua, Randy, Gordon and Frieda were playing at table one. With one hand to go, Voluptua (sitting East) felt that they were slightly behind and that, to win the event, a good result on the final board would be necessary. Their opponents were the dastardly Weasel and Ferret with the Ferret sitting South. This was the bidding:

West	North	East	South
			2♥
3♣	Pass	3♠	Pass
4♦	Pass	6♠	Pass
Pass	Pass

The Ferret’s 2♥ bid was alerted as showing a weak hand with 5 hearts and at least 4 cards in some other suit. The rest of the bidding was natural with Voluptua leaping to 6♠ after Randy had shown a good hand.

	♠5 ♥J5 ♦J8532 ♣KQT84
♠6 ♥T32 ♦AKQT ♣AJ962		♠AKQJT73 ♥K98 ♦97 ♣3
	♠9842 ♥AQ764 ♦64 ♣75

The Ferret led ♣7 and Voluptua studied dummy with some disquiet. In top tricks she had 7 spades, 3 diamonds, and 1 club: 11 only and she needed a 12th. On the bidding the ploy of leading up to the ♥K was almost certainly going to be unsuccessful. Maybe the ♦J would come down in three rounds, or maybe she could finesse against South for this card.

Gordon always advised playing off a long suit to see what would happen and so this is what she did. She took the first trick in dummy and started on the spades. On the second round North showed out. Haha! This showed that North must hold 10 cards in the minors (since South was known to have 5 hearts, North could have two only).

After the initial trick and the next 7 rounds of spades, the Weasel (North) had to retain 5 cards. To guard both minors he had to retain 4 diamonds and the ♣Q. Reading this perfectly Voluptua played a diamond to dummy and then the ♣J. The Weasel took this trick but then had to play away from his ♦J to concede the remainder.

This was enough to win the match and first prize. Randy, who was a keen student of card play, recognised Voluptua’s skill and complimented her. Voluptua smiled sweetly: “yes, a strip-squeeze: would you like to try one later, darling?”

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