September 30, 2013
We had a quiet set of hands last night, which leaves me little to discuss. I’ll start with some bidding issues. Suppose you pick up a dull hand like
You pass, your left hand opponent opens 1H and partner doubles, pass to you. How high will you bid? This is easy. You bid 1S.
Suppose, instead, the bidding goes
You still don’t have much. Do you pass, or should you try two spades?
I tend to answer questions like this by asking where I want to be opposite a minimum take-out double. So, here, would I rather be in two spades or defend against two hearts opposite some 4-2-3-4 12 count? I would much rather declare, so I bid two spades.
Okay, so you bid two spades, and they push on to three hearts. Are you done?
Of course, we pushed them to the three level. Yay! Job well done.
For reasons that I find baffling, players who would happily push them up a level and quit, feel they must bid if the opponents bid three hearts quickly. The auction Sunday went
and our player couldn’t pass. He tried a responsive double. The East-West cards were:
The auction, with North-South vulnerable, was
At the other table, the bidding was
Since everything split, there were eleven easy tricks in diamonds or spades, so playing five diamonds cost two IMPs. Had spades been four-one, five diamonds would go down a trick while four spades would still make. So there should be a way to get to a spade game. I like this auction:
The East hand is not good enough to bid the first time, but too good to simply bid three spades when partner shows extras. So I would force to game, and bid four hearts to avoid spades if partner has only three spades.
Next up was board six. East-West held:
Both Easts opened with 1NT. Where would you like to play?
Notice, six spades needs a diamond finesse, but there are twelve easy tricks in six hearts, without any diamond luck. Six hearts from the West side is virtually lay-down, and both tables bid to that slam. Perfect. Well done.
Board 12 had interesting elements in both the bidding and the card play:
At our table, the auction went:
Five diamonds is way-overboard, off three aces. Indeed, you need the club ace onside to make four diamonds. West led the queen of hearts, won by South. A spade came next, ducked by West, so the other spade went away on the heart king. Suddenly the contract had play, but the club ace was offside.
This was poor defense. West, after partner’s raise, knows the heart ace was singleton, and a second spade, if there is a second spade, will go away. So West should grab that ace and try a high club.
The defense meant more at the other table, which stopped in four diamonds. There, too, declarer got a pitch, and so made +130.
What does four diamonds mean on this sequence? Judging from North’s four heart cue-bid, North wasn’t sure. Was four diamonds weak? Strong? A Splinter? Fit-showing? I am not going to tell you what four diamonds should mean. My view is simple – tournaments aren’t won by the best bidding system. Tournaments are lost because the partners aren’t playing the same system!
I don’t care what four diamonds means. Just make sure that you and your partner are in agreement. Here are a bunch of sequences to discuss with your partner. Again, there is no best solution. But there are very bad solutions, those where one of you thinks A and the other thinks B.
For the rest of this write-up, I want to look at the play on board 14. That’s a bit futile, since no line of play could possibly work as the cards lay, but the lines chosen at the tables gave me plenty to discuss.
Let’s start off with a simple suit combination – hearts are trumps, and you need to run the suit:
Two questions:
- What lines might pick up the suit?
- What are the percentage chances of success for each line?
As a declarer, you will often need to compare the percentages among competing lines of play. To this end, you need to learn and memorize some common probabilities. For instance, holding an eight card trump suit, trumps will split 3-2 around 68% of the time. With nine trumps, they’ll split 2-2 around 40% of the time. Here, with ten trumps, 78% of the time they’ll split out 2-1.
So, the possible plays are:
- Run the ten. This gains only when East has all three trumps, and also works when East has KJ doubleton or the singleton king. Total chance of success – 37%.
- Lay down the ace. That works if either player has a singleton king of trumps – 26%.
- Finesse East for the king. This gains half the time trumps are two-one – 39%.
Playing for the king onside is the best choice. By the way, the great Matchpoint Wizard, Barry Crane, had some odd views on this suit combination. Barry said that the typical defender would never play the trump jack holding J4 doubleton. He would cross to dummy and lead low. If East played the jack, he would finesse, but if East played the four, he would stop and consider. West started originally with a void, a singleton king or a singleton jack. The void was the least likely, but might be a consideration in some auctions. Of the two singletons, again assuming East would always play the four from J4 doubleton, they are equally likely, so Barry would play the ace if anything suggested that West had more high cards than East. He would also play the ace if he just needed a big board to win the event.
The lesson here – learn your opponent’s foibles, and try not to be so wooden on defense that you can be type-cast.
Of course, playing one suit to best advantage might not be right for the hand as a whole. Consider this layout:
With no one vulnerable, the auction goes:
West leads out the ace and queen of clubs, as East plays the seven and the eight (upside-down count and attitude). Plan the play.
Here, you can afford a trump loser if you can hold your diamond losers to one. That will certainly be the case if the opponents attack diamonds. The contract is almost a lock if trumps split. You should trump this club, and play the heart ace. Let’s say that both follow small. Now spade king, spade ace, and if no one trumps that, you are home. Lead the club jack next. If East trumps in with the king, throw your spade, forcing East to break diamonds, or give you a ruff and sluff, with a diamond going away from dummy. Otherwise, you trump the club, trump your spade, and exit a trump. Maybe the full hand will look like this:
As usual, you can follow the play trick-by-trick by hitting the next button.
Okay, let’s modify the trump suit slightly:
What is the best way to play this suit?
Again, it is best to finesse East for the trump king, and now we must start with the trump jack. This lets us pick up K104 onside.
Even so, in this scenario:
we should still play the trump ace next, hoping for the elimination.
What if we weaken the diamonds slightly?
This is much closer. Leading the ace of trumps first is wrong if East has a doubleton king of trumps, or K104. But we will still survive the doubleton king onside when West has the diamond ten. So we gain when West has the singleton king of trumps, and break even on half the other singletons. We also gain when West has a doubleton king of trumps and honor-ten in diamonds. Maybe this is the layout:
I think it is right to lay down the trump ace on this hand also, but you might persuade me otherwise.
At the table, the diamonds were substantially weaker:
Again, West started with two high clubs, as East played seven and eight. Plan your play.
There is no reason not to take the trump finesse, so you should trump this club, cross to the spade ace, and lead the heart jack. At the table, East played the heart ten, the finesse lost to the king, and West continued with the club king, as East played the nine. Now what?
Somehow or another, you must avoid a second diamond loser. One slim hope is that someone has KQ doubleton in diamonds. We could also force a second diamond trick if East started with a singleton king or queen by cashing the ace and leading up to the jack. Also highly unlikely.
Better chances involve an endplay. Here, there are many possibilities, after eliminating spades. We could make the hand in these scenarios:
- West started with a singleton honor in diamonds. Draw the last trump, clear spades, and duck a diamond.
- West started with K10 or Q10 in diamonds. Draw the last trump, clear spades, and play diamond ace, diamond. West will be endplayed, or East will overtake and set up the jack. Notice, this line might also work if West started with a doubleton king or queen, but fails to unblock under the ace. If we go for this line, we should cash the diamond ace early, increasing the chances of a sleepiness error.
- East started with a doubleton diamond honor. Draw the last trump, clear spades, and play diamond ace, diamond.
- West started with the king and queen of diamonds. Draw the last trump, clear spades, and lead a low diamond toward the jack. Here, we need to end up in hand, so we must play spades before drawing the last trump. That trump is the entry to hand.
So many choices! Which is best? What do we know about the hand? First, how are the clubs divided?
West has at least five clubs. East has shown up with the 987 in clubs. It looks as though West started with AKQ1053 in clubs, or AKQ53, with the 10987 with East. At trick one, East played the diamond seven, upside down. I would expect East to play the diamond nine from 987, so clubs appear to be five-four.
What else do we know?
We will know the heart division shortly, but I would guess that West has the missing heart four. I think declarer should play spade king, and trump a spade now, keeping open option 4. If West shows out on the third spade, then West is likely to be 2-2-4-5, and option three looks best. If West follows to the third spade, we ruff, draw the last trump, and take stock.
On the first spade, West played the two, East the seven. Under the spade king, West plays the six, East the three. When we trump our spade, we get the jack from West, and the four from East, who discards the spade five on the second trump. This leaves:
Only one spade is out, the queen. Who has it?
This is not certain, but East played the spade seven on the first round of the suit, showing an odd number of spades, while West showed an even number. Usually the player with few high cards, and so fewer key decisions, cards honestly. I would tend to believe East. In any event, West was either 4-2-2-5, and our only hope is to play diamond ace, diamond, or West was 3-2-3-5, and we have to lead a low diamond, hoping that West has both the king and queen. We have to hope that West held a hand like
- J62 K4 KQ8 AKQ53, or
- QJ62 K4 Q10 AKQ53.
I would probably double one heart with either hand, rather than bid two clubs. Maybe the second hand is more likely on the bidding, and the first more likely on the carding. Your guess?
At our table, declarer simply drew the last trump and ducked a diamond, playing only for the diamond king-queen doubleton. At the other table, declarer drew the last trump, and ruffed the spade. I expected ace of diamonds and a diamond next, but declarer simply ducked a diamond next. Neither line had much of a chance.
In practice, West held J62 K4 Q108 AKQ53, so no line would work.
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