The 9th round of the Budapest Teams Championship is behind us and there are only two weeks left till the end. In the I/A division team VISOFT increased its lead to almost 14 VPs over GALIM and GAMAX on the third place trails them by only 2.
In the major group of the I/B division ECOSOFT is on the top of the list with a significant margin: there is a 20 VP gap between them and the second best CSILLAGVIRÁG. In the minor group team LOWEL marched to the first place winning almost 20 VPs this week, but they still must play well if they want to keep their position because team IZOBAU and LEÓ are closely behind them.
This week’s best declarer play is from Balázs Kotányi. In this boards he played 3NT after the ace of clubs lead. He won the small club continuation on dummy with the jack then played a small heart to the ace, took his high spades and the king of diamonds. Now he knew he can give the trick to West with the king of clubs and he will have nothing to return without giving him a trick. West played his clubs and returned the ten of hearts. East played the queen, declarer took it and played the jack of hearts.
When Kotányi played his ace of diamonds, West saw that he was going to be endplayed so he discarded the queen. This way had his partner had the jack, the contract still could have gone down, but not now. The jack of diamonds was declarer’s ninth trick.