June 10, 2013

The play last night was strong, leaving me little to carp about.  I’ll focus on two defensive positions. 

On the first, board 7, West held

The auction went, with both sides vulnerable:

     
What is the best opening lead?

There is almost never a correct answer to such a question.  Let’s try to piece together what we can.  North has shown a strong hand with four hearts and at least five clubs.  South has shown four, maybe five spades, and a diamond stopper.

Our clubs are poor, but the nine might be a nuisance.  If partner can’t contribute anything in clubs, North-South will run five club tricks, but if partner can beat an honor, they may only take three clubs.

 
We have only a singleton heart, yet the opponents did not opt to play in hearts.  This means that partner has at least five hearts, yet the suit wasn’t attractive enough to overcall one heart.  That suggests that the heart suit is not very robust.  Given time, North-South will win two or three heart tricks.  It sounds like they have diamonds under control, so will take at least two or three diamond tricks, but we have spades locked up. 

Our five defensive tricks will come from our spades, and partner’s stuff.  We have two ways to set this:

 

1.  Lead spades, and hope partner has enough in spades to let us run the suit when partner gets in.
2.  Or, lead passively, and hope partner gets in twice and can leads spades through twice. 

To me, we can attack with the spade ten, or try a passive lead like the club nine or the diamond seven.  Here was the full hand:

West led a club, and East won the king and smartly shifted to spades.  If East could get in with the heart king, the hand would be set, but South had four clubs, four diamonds and the heart ace.  South wound up with four club winners, because the club king was played on air.  Here, a lead of the diamond seven might have set the contract, if South won in hand and took a club finesse, and if East worked out to shift to spades.  That impact is pretty random luck.  On this hand, the club lead helped them guess the best way to play clubs, while the diamonds were solid.  On other layouts, there might be no club guess, while the diamond lead helps them guess the diamonds (finding partner’s queen, or Jack-fourth).

Personally, I’d have tried the spade ten, but that too would fail when partner had only two spades for me. 

In any event, West made a thoughtful opening lead, and East found a good shift.  This would have worked had South held one less diamond.  Nice try.  This was careful and accurate defense by both players.

Take the West seat again on board five:

             

With North-South vulnerable, the auction went:

 

You, West, start with the six of clubs, and declarer wins partner’s jack with the queen, to lead the diamond jack.  That wins the trick, and South continues with the diamond queen.  Time for some questions:

 

1.  Who has the king of clubs?
2. Who has the king of diamonds?
3.  Who has the king of spades?
4. How are we going to get seven tricks?

1 and 2 are easy.  Remember, third hand plays high, or the lowest of equal high cards, so when partner played the jack, partner does not have the king.  Likewise, partner would have won the first trick and played clubs for you with the diamond king, so you can be sure that South has that card as well.  We can’t really tell who has the spade king, but, if South has it, we have no real hope of setting one notrump. 

     If partner must hold a specific card to give the defense a chance, then assume that partner has that card! 

So, my answer to three is East, but that is purely wishful thinking. 

As to 4, we can hope to get partner in with the spade king, and get a club through.  This will give us four club winners, our two aces, and the spade.

 
Good.  This is a plan for the defense.  Now we have a really hard decision to make.  Should we win the second diamond, and shift to spades, or win the third diamond? 

As I have said before, it is usually good for the defenders to preserve their stopper in declarer’s primary suit.  That argues for ducking another diamond.  This could work out very poorly.  Suppose this were the full hand:

 
If we duck a second diamond, declarer can shift gears, and tackle hearts, coming to seven tricks without ever letting partner in.  Of course, this might be the full hand:

Here, if we grab the second diamond and play a spade, Partner will win the finesse, and play the five of clubs back, covered by the eight and our nine.  We will lay down the club ace, and feel disappointment.  We would still survive that disappointment had we held up diamonds to the third round, for then South would have lots of winners, but no way to get to them.  You can follow the play if you win the second diamond above.  Here is what would happen if you hold up diamonds to the third round:

At the table, West held up on diamonds again, and won the third diamond, as East discarded a discouraging spade.  Well, that’s a let-down.  So, it looks as though South has the spade king, and we have little chance.  There is still one slim hope, and we may as well play for it.  What hope is that?

We should lead a low heart and hope that North doesn’t put up the king.  Maybe South has the jack, and partner the queen, giving South a real guess.  Perhaps the hand looks like this:

By the way, if South has the spade king, then South will not have the heart jack.  Why? 

Because, spade king, diamond king, queen, jack, and club king, queen are fourteen points.  With one more, South would have opened 1NT (Sorry, had to get some counting in somewhere). 
Here was the actual hand:

 

Unlike most of the hands from Sunday, there were a number of errors made on this one.  See if you can find them all:  The play went club six to the jack and queen, diamond jack and queen winning, as East played the six and seven, diamond king to West’s ace, as East discarded the spade three.  Spade ten shift, won with the ace, as East encouraged with the seven.  Heart two to the four, jack, and three.  Now declarer had seven tricks. 

Letting the heart jack win was quite poor – that was the seventh trick, so West had to win that and play a spade to partner.  What were all the other errors?

1.   At trick one, South should win with the club king, not the queen.  Remember, when East plays the jack, East might also hold the queen, so winning with the king creates some ambiguity for West.  Winning with the queen made the hand easy to read.  Here, the play made no difference, but you should develop tricky habits as declarer.
2. East should play the diamond seven first, giving count accurately.  Again, like most errors, this one made no difference. 
3.   East should discard the spade seven, not the spade three.  As I pointed out above, that could easily talk your partner into trying a desperation heart shift.
4. After two rounds of diamonds, South could have tried hearts, but that looks like Monday afternoon quarterbacking.  I don’t think it was wrong to continue diamonds.  However, when West tried a spade shift, even after the discouraging discard, North must finesse.  To see why, just switch around the spade king and the heart ace.  Rising with the spade ace would set up the seventh defensive trick.  Oddly enough, this error turned golden, since the spade finesse was off, and the defense let declarer slip through a heart.  Most errors at bridge don’t matter, and some are even rewarded.