Reisinger Challenge by Marshall Miles

Years ago, when this reviewer started playing in tournaments, there was always a Mixed Pairs on Saturday night when the men wore coats and ties and the women wore formals. This event was always followed by a Board-A-Match Teams on Sunday. This was almost the only type of team game available, since Swiss Teams had not been invented yet, and major knockouts were only held at Nationals and big Regionals. The Reisinger Teams, held annually at the fall NABCs, is the only major Board-A-Match Teams contested nationally, but BAM Teams are having a mild resurgence recently with the addition of single-session BAM Teams to the NABC schedules.

The publication of Reisinger Challenge by Marshall Miles was therefore quite timely. This is his sixth book, but he is perhaps better known as one of Eddie Kantar's early partners with, like Kantar, sometimes unorthodox but thought-provoking ideas about bidding. In this book, Miles has collected 54 hands from past Reisinger events, and presents them in problem format, with some sort of problem (bidding, opening lead, declarer play or defense) posed on one page, with the suggested solution overleaf. After each set of nine boards, he tells you what happened at your teammates' table, so that you can keep a running score of your results. My favorite hand, perhaps because I got it right, was:

Partner leads the duece of diamonds against 3NT after declarer has shown a balanced 13-15 HCP. You win the jack, and return what? See the end of the review for the answer.

These are easier than real-life problems, because you know in advance that there is some sort of problem on each board, but to win at BAM you must look hard for hidden problems on every board, so working through these problems is good preparation if you want to tackle one of the BAM games before they return to obscurity.

Answer:The usual play with this holding would be to return the diamond queen, but here you should return the diamond five, since you will not be on lead later. This blocks the suit, since partner holds K972 and declarer holds A1086, but it is the only way to win three diamond tricks, and the blocked suit should be no problem, since on the bidding you expect partner to hold at least one entry, probably two.