ª42
©1043
¨AKJ98
§1072
©AQ762
¨42
§865
ªK10853
©K8
¨653
§K43
ªAQ9
©J95
¨Q107
§AQJ9
Eddie predicted that Andrezj would lead his ªK, and when his partner played the ª7, he would then switch to ©K and ©8 - and that’s exactly what happened. His partner then ran off the heart suit to set the contract three tricks!
Magic? Not really. Some super-signal known only to super-experts? Wrong again. The ploy the declarer used to try to mislead the defense - winning a trick with an unnecessarily high card to mask his weakness elsewhere - has been documented many times in many different situations, so Andrezj had a right to be suspicious when the ªA won trick 1. He solved the problem of finding out whether declarer was bluffing or not by depending on his expert partner to unblock the spade suit when he laid down the king. When partner didn’t play the ªQ under his king, it meant that he didn’t have it, so Andrezj switched to the heart suit, which must have been what South was afraid of all the time!
There are 75 defensive problems in this book, and learning the lesson from any one of them would easily be worth the price of the volume by itself. They aren’t easy, but they all are entertaining and highly thought-provoking.
Besides, it’s worth the price just to note that Eddie admitted that ... while reviewing the manuscript to update the 21st Century edition ... he himself missed several of the answers, although they were problems that he had composed for the first edition!
Even born con artists slow down a bit as they grow older!