Brilliant Defence

In this new article, Jérôme Rombaut looks back at a deal played by Team Funbridge member Nicolai Hieberg-Evenstad. Discover this brilliant deal which could well lead Nicolai to see his strategy become the defence of the year.

This is your hand. This board comes from the 15th European Youth Mixed Pairs Championships held in Veldhoven in July 2023.

The auction goes:

What do you lead ? Most players would lead the CQ, but Nicolai chose the D7.

The dummy (East):

Partner puts the diamond 10 and declarer takes with the Ace.

Declarer goes to dummy with the club king and plays the heart 4 to his queen. What is your plan ?

Nicolai ducks instantly. (He already has a plan, and the declarer is going to follow it!)

Declarer goes back to dummy with the club ace and plays back the Heart 10. Nicolaï took with the king and now plays back a diamond for Partner’s king and a trump promotion in diamonds because you have the heart 7 and dummy only has the heart 6!

Is it not beautiful ?

If you had passively taken the first heart (like the majority of players), nothing would have been possible because the ten of Hearts still remained in the dead man’s watchdog.

Nicolai let declarer hope that the King of Hearts was placed, and put yourself in declarer’s shoes, he started again from the 10 in the hope of staying at the dead man and renewing the stalemate if the King was fourth placed … and that would have been it!

Thanks to this board and many others, Nicolai managed to win the event. Congrats to him and her partner : Sofie Grasholt Sjodal!

This is the full hand:

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