July 1, 2013 – Where’s Perry Mason When We Need Him?

Before getting into the card play from last night, I want to make one bidding observation – successful contracts depend on both high card power and on shape.

I love shape, but bidding on shape alone is risky, particularly since partner is apt to place you with more high card strength.  Here is a simple example:  Sitting North, you hold

The bidding starts:

   
The heart void is a big, big plus, and I would love to double here, but, if I double with 12 points and also double with 19 points, how can partner judge? 

I often play Precision, and a big advantage of a club system like Precision is that, unless the opening bid is 1C, opener has a limited hand, and can focus on describing shape.  Playing Precision, I would open 2C, and, after   

I would happily double. 

This was board 11 from last night:

In standard, the auction would start off 1C 1H 2D, and North-South would bid easily to five diamonds, making six with everything splitting.  Two of our crew have adopted Precision (yay!), and so North opened 2C.  After the two heart overcall, the South hand isn’t worth a three diamond call, so Precision made it harder for South to get into the auction, but also made it easier for North to act again.  Unfortunately, neither player bid, and the auction went  

So, North-South collected 100 against four hearts, cold for a diamond slam.   To my Precision mind, North should have doubled three hearts.

Again, shape is important, and, if your system has already limited your strength, then get in there with extra shape.  This is particularly true, using any system, once you are a passed hand. 

Now, to the play.  Last night was not a good night for the defense, hence my Perry Mason title (not that any of you have any idea who or what a Perry Mason is.  Google him).  Out of 11 hands, 5 contracts made that could easily have been set.  In several cases, the swing came on opening lead, which is mostly a matter of luck.  Opening leads are hard, and no one gets them all right.  Still, one disastrous opening lead seemed hard to blame on bad luck.  This was board 9:

South was on opening lead against four hearts, with East-West vulnerable, on this auction:

     
Four hearts is off four top tricks (not surprisingly.  East overbid.  You expect partner to raise on QJx in hearts and a side ace, opposite which game will have no play, so East should not blast into a game.  The East hand is worth an invite, but West might well accept anyway). 

I mentioned last week that players don’t underlead aces against suit contracts.  There is a very good reason for this – too often someone has a singleton and the lead fails miserably.  Guess what?  South led the diamond four, and there went the setting trick. 

South gets all the blame on this one, but North contributed a little.  North, having passed originally, could certainly have overcalled three clubs, and gotten partner off to a better lead.  Remember what I said above, about bidding with shape as a passed hand?  North should definitely get into this auction.  Should North double?  Reasonable.  Try 2NT, for the minors?  Reasonable.  Bid 3C?  Also reasonable.  I would not pass.

 
For my next exhibit, the defense found the best opening lead, but faltered later.  Look at it from East’s perspective (this was board 8, rotated to make South the declarer):

       
With no one vulnerable, the auction was quick:

   
Partner leads the heart five (third from even, low from odd) to your ace.  You can see three tricks on defense.  Where will you get two more?

That is pretty easy.  We need a trick from partner and a heart ruff.  Simply return our heart.  If partner has the heart king, we’ll get that and a ruff.  Otherwise, we can win the diamond ace, and put partner in with, say, the club ace, to get our ruff. 

So, you return the heart seven, as South wins with the king, and partner plays the three.  Next comes a spade to the king and your ace.  Interesting.  Why is South playing on spades?

There are often many reasons to lead to dummy’s singleton king.  These include:

 

1.  Setting up the queen for a discard.
2.  Planning to trump spades in dummy.
3. Generating an entry to dummy for some other play.

Which of these is the most likely? 

Well, 1 might make sense, except that you hold the spade queen, so that is out.  Ruffing a bunch of spades in dummy, when dummy has six trumps, doesn’t seem very logical.  So, that leaves 3.  In fact, it is hard to imagine any hand where South wouldn’t want to start drawing trumps.  Can you think of any reason why South would want to start the trumps from the table?

Sure, if South plans to finesse in trumps.  This strongly suggests that partner holds the trump queen. 
That is interesting, and the kind of deduction that you should learn to make when defending, but it doesn’t affect our plan.  You should win the ace of spades and play a club, hoping partner can get in and cash a heart, or give you a heart ruff.  Which club should you play?

That is unlikely to matter, but, as a general matter, when defending, a low card suggests values in the suit, a suit you want partner to return.  Shift to a high card with a poor holding in the suit, or if you want partner to play a different suit.  Here, of course, you want partner to win the club and give you a heart ruff, so you should shift to a high club, either the ten or eight.  I prefer the eight (because, if South wins the ace of clubs, trumps a spade, and leads a trump, you will go up with the ace, put partner in with the king of clubs, and get your heart ruff.  If you play, say, club ten, club eight, partner might try to give you a ruff in clubs.  There won’t be any temptation to give you a club ruff if you play club eight, club ten). 

At the table, East shifted to the five of clubs.  South finessed, losing to the king, but our oblivious partner returned the club two.  There goes the heart ruff.  Now what? 

There are still two chances.

 

1. We might win two trump tricks, with our ace and partner’s queen, if declarer finesses.
2.  Or, we might win two trump tricks by taking our ace and giving partner a ruff in clubs.  Maybe that’s why partner returned a club.

Your choice?

This one is also easy.  We can’t win the diamond ace and give partner a club ruff unless partner started with at least two diamonds.  Is that possible?  Yes, but only if South opened on a three card diamond suit.  That happens only when South has three diamonds and two clubs.  So, option 2 is not possible.  That leaves 1.

At the table, South won the second club with the ace, trumped a spade, and played the trump jack.  East went up with the ace, to play another club, playing for the impossible option 2.  Declarer won this club on dummy and guessed to play a trump to the king, making three diamonds.  Good guess. 
Here was the full hand:

 
Would South have guessed diamonds correctly had East played low on the jack of trumps? 

Who knows?  However, South knows that a heart ruff is threatened, so finessing, and having West win with the ace, can’t be any good.  The hand can’t be made unless East holds the ace of trumps, so South should probably guess it right.

I’ll finish this off looking at Board 5, from declarer’s perspective.  First, a hypothetical:

 
With East-West vulnerable, the auction goes

West leads the three of spades, to the nine, jack, and your queen.  That’s a friendly start, and it looks like the spade king is onside.  Given that, what do you know about the rest of the hand?

Counting points, you have 12, dummy has 12, and West has 3 (the spade king).  That leaves 13 more points, and East will have most or all of those.  In particular, East will have both aces, and probably the club queen.  East also promised at least five hearts, so West has at most one heart, and might well have led that suit, so it is quite possible that hearts are 0-6. 

Counting our tricks:  We can win three spade tricks with another finesse.  We can lead to our king and queen of hearts, and take two heart tricks.  We can always develop a club winner, and have at least three diamond tricks.  So game looks pretty easy.  When the contract looks easy, stop and ask yourself this:

     Can anything go wrong?

The big danger is that diamonds might not run.  Indeed, if hearts are really 0-6, this is quite likely.  Suppose this is the full hand:

What will happen if we set up our diamonds, losing a trick to West? 

West can shift to clubs, and East will set up the long club, before we have established a heart winner. 

There are several ways to avoid this.  One easy approach is to set up a heart winner before tackling diamonds.  We might play a spade to the ten, heart to the king, and then go back to diamonds.  Another approach is to finesse West for the jack of diamonds.  Nothing East plays can hurt us, and we don’t need any more than four diamond tricks to make the contract.

 
In many contracts, there is a dangerous hand, a hand that, if on lead, could make a play, like a club here, that would hurt our chances.  In cases like that, it pays to make a weird finesse to keep that scary hand off lead.

 
At the table, this was the actual hand, but South, over the 2H cue-bid, rebid three diamonds and played there.  An initial club lead would have set the hand easily, but West tried the spade three, to the nine, jack, and queen.  An unlucky start.  Once again, what does declarer know about the hand?

Again, South knows that East will have almost every other honor card, and that hearts are 0-6.  West might not lead a singleton heart against 3NT, but would always lead that singleton against three diamonds, so the heart split was a certainty.  That heart split makes it likely that diamonds aren’t splitting.  So, should South finesse the diamond jack here also?

No!  Count up the losers.  South might lose two clubs and a trick to the heart ace.  That’s only three, so South can afford a trump loser.  What South can’t afford is to lose a trick to the trump jack and then another trump trick on a ruff. 

So, South should simply draw three rounds of trumps, and then lead up to the hearts twice. 

At the table, South played the diamond king, diamond to the ace, and then called for a low heart from the table.  This was a major error, and should have led to two ruffs.  Sure enough, West trumped the heart, played a club to partner, but East tried a spade, so the contract made anyway. 

The hand played out like a ping-pong point – A club opening lead would set the hand, but no, West tried a spade.  Unlucky.  Now three rounds of trumps would land the contract.  No, South only drew two rounds.  Now, two ruffs were there to set the hand.  They got one, would they get the other?  No!  Contract made.