August 21, 2013

Hi, everyone.  I have been moved to your group this week.  I am Steven Bloom, and love to write about and analyze bridge hands.  I am a retired mathematician, and spend much of my time these days writing for the Junior program, for http://www.bridgewinners.com, and for http://www.DoubleDummy.net.  Please, check out those sites if you haven’t already.  Each week, I will pick a few hands from Sunday’s session, and focus on the card-play. 

My first exhibit was the very first hand of the evening, a defensive problem.  Sit yourself in the East chair (I always rotate the hands to make declarer South):

       
With nobody vulnerable, the auction went:

      
Partner leads the spade king against 2NT, won by declarer’s ace.  South leads a diamond to the queen, a diamond back to the king, and runs the diamonds.  Here are several questions for you:

1.  How good are partner’s spades?
2.  How good are partner’s clubs?
3. How good are partner’s hearts?
4. How should the defense go?

By the way, I am asking all these questions without letting you know which diamonds partner plays.  Partner can and should help out by signaling appropriately.  For instance, if you play Smith echo, partner can answer the first question almost immediately.  Likewise, partner can choose other diamond spots to help you build a picture of the hand.

Signals are quite important, but they can also help declarer, and they might become crutches for you.  Most things you can work out on your own.  Trust your partner to signal what you need to know, and work out the rest yourself! 

Good defense relies on two things.  First, count.  Count, count, count.  I can’t overemphasize the importance of counting.  You count winners, losers, distribution, high card points, and on and on.  Next, put yourself in the declarer’s shoes.  There is always a logic to the choices declarer makes, and if you can figure out what declarer is doing, you’ll know the hand. 

Now, to my questions.  For 1), if partner’s spades are ready to run, then we can grab the heart ace as soon as possible, and run a bunch of spades.  But declarer would never win the first spade with a vulnerable spade holding.  With either AJx in spades, or A10xx, partner would have won the first trick.  So, South has either AJxx, AJ10, or A109x in spades. 

For 2), partner has the ace of clubs.  Why?  If not, declarer has eight top tricks and you can’t set the hand. 

          If partner needs a card to set the contract, assume partner has that card.

By the way, partner knows that you know about the ace of clubs, so partner won’t bother to signal about that card. 

That brings us to 3).  If South has good hearts, KQxxx, along with a second spade stopper, the defense has no chance, so we need partner to help in hearts.  We need partner to hold the singleton king of hearts, or possibly the singleton queen, with declarer mis-guessing.  So, the idea that we should fly up with the heart ace as soon as possible?  Not so good. 

Okay, let’s give declarer a hand like AJ9x Q98xx Kxx J, and project the play:

We can see seven easy tricks for declarer, and we can’t set up partner’s spades without surrendering the eighth trick.  What about clubs?  That looks very good.  Partner can play clubs, starting with the ace, and set up winners for us.  So, to 4), it looks like we want to encourage in clubs, and then throw three hearts. 

The full hand was quite close to this, but partner had even weaker spades, and the contract probably couldn’t be set:

 
At the table, East correctly discarded an encouraging club, and then three hearts.  West played diamonds up the line.  As West, I would tend to play middle diamonds, trying to suggest the heart king, and relatively weak spades (given my overcall and lead). 

Here was the ending, with West still to discard on the last diamond:

 

One possibility is for West to discard a spade, win the heart, and play club ace, club nine.  That would set the hand, but declarer might not lead a heart next.  Declarer would make by leading a spade next.  Alternatively, West could discard a club, win the heart and lead a low club, forcing South to guess the clubs for the contract. 

West chose that option, but East put up the heart ace on the heart jack (oops!) and the hand was over.  East had defended very well until the ending, and then …

My other two hands feature declarer play problems.  Both hands could have been made, yet failed at the table.  The first was fairly easy, the other much trickier.

First, try to play this hand in four spades:

     
The auction was

West leads the club ace, and continues the suit.  Side suits like this are always interesting.  Which hand might need a late entry?  Do you keep a club winner in your hand, or on the table?  Plan your play.

Dummy is excellent, and the idea must be to set up the hearts.  You can afford to lose the club and two trump tricks, so even a bad trump split shouldn’t matter if you can bring in the heart suit.  The basic idea here is to play heart ace, ruff a heart, (possibly cashing the spade king first), then a second round of trumps, ending on dummy, and another heart ruff.  By that point, dummy should be good, except for possible trump losers.  Since you will need to get back to the table, you should keep a club winner on the table.  So, play the club jack, or play the king and drop the queen. 

At the table, East trumped the second club and returned a diamond.  Still no problems – trump the diamond, spade king, heart ace, heart ruff, spade ace, heart ruff, and a club back to dummy.   Unless hearts are 5-1, or the remaining trumps 4-0, you will take ten tricks, or more. 

Here was the full hand:

 
Our declarer drew a second round of trumps too early, and could no longer establish the heart suit.  You can follow the play by hitting the next button above.

Finally, a poor slam that might have fetched:

The auction, with East-West vulnerable, started the same at both tables:

Our South decided, correctly, that he’d done enough.  At the other table, South bid the slam.  West led the club two, low from odd, North played low and East played the king, which declarer trumped.  Declarer then drew trumps, which split two-two.  I don’t believe that this is the best start, but more on that later.  For now, take over the South seat and try to make the slam.  First, some simple questions for you:

1.  How many losers do you have?
2.  How many winners?
3.  What do you need to develop twelve tricks?
4.  What do you know about the club suit?  Could that help?

You can throw a diamond on the third round of spades, but that will still leave a certain diamond loser.  There are no other obvious losers, but we are short of winners.  We have five trumps, three spades, and the diamond ace, nine tricks.  We can trump two cards in dummy, for eleven.  But not twelve. 

The best chance for another trick is a 3-3 diamond split.  We could then trump our spade loser, give up a diamond, trump a diamond, and win the long diamond.  That is our main chance, which is not great, but not hopeless either.

Now, to the club suit.  West seems to have three or five clubs, and East four, or six.  West would not underlead the club ace, so East started with the club ace-king, and West appears to have the jack.  East would probably have bid with AK – sixth of clubs, so clubs should be 5-4.  How is that useful?  Well, neither opponent can play clubs again without giving us another trick, our twelfth trick!  So, if diamonds are four-two, maybe the person with two diamonds will have to win the second round and play a club for us.  Maybe the hand will look something like this:

We continue with spades, trumping our spade in dummy, leaving:

  
Now a diamond to the ace, and a diamond to West.  Down to nothing but clubs, West will be stuck, and give us our slam-going trick.  Neat!

Do you see any flaws in that analysis?

West, who can see all this developing, might think to drop the diamond king under our ace!  No more endplay.  It is still a good plan, but we would do better cashing our diamond ace early, before West wakes up to the danger. 

Here is a strong line of play:  Lead the diamond ace next, and then play four rounds of spades, before exiting a diamond. 

The full hand was quite interesting:

Here, thanks to the diamond nine and ten, West can’t set the hand even if he sees the need to dump the diamond king.  The ending would be this:

We exit with a diamond and the defense has three losing options:

1.  West wins the ten to play clubs.
2.   East wins to play clubs.
3.  East wins and continues diamonds, setting up our nine.

Let’s back this hand up, to trick one.  When West led the club two, that showed an odd number of clubs, either three or five.  But South had splintered, so it couldn’t be three.  East knew that South was out of clubs, and should stick in the eight at trick one, and not set up this endplay threat:

Still, declarer might yet survive.  When declarer trumps the fourth spade on the table, the position becomes fairly clear.  West has four spades, two hearts, and an odd number of clubs, either three or five, so diamonds aren’t splitting.  The best guess is that West was 4-2-2-5.  Declarer’s only hope now is that East has both the club ace and king.  If that is the case, East is squeezed in a strange way, in this ending:

When the spade is trumped, East cannot let go a diamond, so must throw the club three.  That allows declarer to trump a club before exiting a diamond, again endplaying either player.  That would be a great ending.

Still, it shouldn’t arise.  Once dummy hits, the main chance for the contract is a 3-3 diamond split.  Declarer can often survive if East has four diamonds by playing on cross-ruff lines.  Trump the club, and play four rounds of spades, trumping safely low, if you can, but here, when West has the spade length, discarding another diamond.  This may allow declarer to trump all three diamonds in dummy, if, as here, West has two diamonds without both the ten and nine of trumps.  The odd squeeze isn’t needed.  Here is how the play might go even without the friendly clubs:

 Only an initial trump lead would set the hand on this layout – and, in my view, this auction screams for a trump lead.