November 19, 2013

Three declarer play problems from Monday caught my interest, but first, a very elementary suit combination.  What is the best way to tackle this spade suit for two winners?

 

Leading low to the jack gains a trick if West has both the king and queen.  Leading low to the nine works when West has both the king-ten or queen-ten.  That is twice as likely, so the correct play. 

Either way, declarer will need two hand entries to tackle this suit.  Suppose the suit were like this:

When declarer leads the suit, West should almost always put up the queen.  This doesn’t change the entry situation, but forces declarer to win the spade ace and use up the other entry before the suit is established.  Sometimes using up that entry sets up winners for the defenders.  Consider this simple four card ending, with hearts trump:

 

South is on lead and needs three more tricks.  South leads a spade, and inserts the nine.  East can win and force declarer with a club, but another spade finesse wins the rest.  But look at what happens if West puts up the spade queen.  To win a second spade trick, North must win, and South must get back to hand.  The only way back is to trump the diamond loser.  East discards the spade seven and wins the last two tricks. 

Okay, if West is supposed to play an honor from Q10x or K10x, what if West has the king and queen?

It looks best for West to duck, expecting declarer to play the nine.  However, if you always duck with the king and queen, and always play an honor from king-ten or queen-ten, a savvy declarer will pick this up, and insert the jack here.  So, to protect yourself, you must, occasionally, play an honor from the king and queen.

This suit-combination will appear again in my third play problem.  Let’s start with a very simple hand, and simple contract:

With both sides vulnerable, the bidding went:

 West starts with the heart ace, king, and three, trumped by East (who played four, ten).  Back comes the spade four.  You win the ace as West plays an encouraging two.  Plan the play.

The winning line of play will depend on how the four remaining trumps are now divided.

 

1. If they are now split two-two, we can simply draw trumps and take eight obvious tricks.
2.  If they are split three-one, then West has a trump trick.  Still, we can make the hand by cashing one high trump, removing East’s trump, throwing a spade on the heart jack and trumping a spade.
3.  If they are one-three, East has a trump trick, but we can play the heart winner now, as East trumps in with that natural trump trick, and ruff our spade on the table.

Problems like these are common.  We can choose in a couple of ways.  First off, we can often combine lines to increase our chances of success.  For instance, we can combine 1 and 2 by cashing one high trump before deciding.  If East plays an honor, we might believe it, and go for line 2, otherwise line 1.

Likewise, lines 1 and 3 combine easily and naturally.  Throwing the spade right away won’t hurt when East  trumps in from two remaining trumps.  So line 3 is much stronger than line 1.

We can also consider the clues from the bidding and play so far to help determine which line is most likely to succeed.  Here, playing for line 2, with West having three trumps, is clearly wrong.  West, who opened one diamond, would then have at least four diamonds, and the four hearts that we’ve seen.  That would give East at least seven spades, headed by three of the top five honors.  Totally impossible.

So, we should throw dummy’s spade on the good heart before touching trumps.

Though it won’t matter here, let’s stay in practice.  Describe West’s hand as completely as possible!

West seems to have quite a lot of high card points.  If West were very short in clubs, West would double two clubs, so West will have two or three clubs.  We’ve ruled out three clubs.  Thus West is balanced, 3-4-4-2 or 4-4-3-2, with a hand too strong to open 1NT.  If spades were 3-6, East would almost certainly have bid them.  So West is a big favorite to hold a 4-4-3-2 eighteen or nineteen count.

West’s hand: 

 
My second exhibit is board 6, where our declarer succumbed to a common trap:

The bidding, with East-West vulnerable, was:

West leads the spade six.  Plan the play.

Assuming hearts run, you should be able to win at least five hearts, two spades, and two diamonds.  In the meantime, the opponents might be able to score a spade, a diamond, and three clubs, but that would be extremely unlucky.  If the spade lead is fourth best, then the spade seven will win the first trick.  You can take a diamond finesse next, knock out the spade, and take at least nine winners, even if hearts don’t split.  So declarer tried the spade seven – quite reasonable.  East covered with the nine.  Now what?

Nothing has changed much.  Win the spade and start on diamonds, leading a low diamond from hand.  This should set up nine winners easily, unless hearts are foul, or East can get in with both the diamond king and spade ace to lead clubs through twice. 

So what went wrong?  Here was the full hand:

Declarer won the spade king and ran the hearts.  What can South discard?  If South ever throws a club, then East, in with the spade ace, can shift to a club, and win three clubs, and the diamond.  If South keeps all three clubs, then South has to throw two spades, no good, or two diamonds, also no good!  Running the hearts prematurely squeezed South out of a winner or a stopper. 

My final hand is incredibly complicated, and I am not sure there is a right approach.  This was board eight, rotated to make South the declarer:

The bidding, with no one vulnerable, was:

 

West led the diamond six, usually third or fifth.  Plan the play.

This should be an easy contract if trumps split.  If not, you need to hold your spade losers to one.  This is the suit-combination I highlighted at the beginning.  Playing East for honor-ten is better than playing for the king and queen onside, but, particularly if trumps don’t split, entries to the table are sparse, and we might be better off playing East for the spade king and queen.  The opening lead is a bit strange, and suggests that West has either pretty good diamonds, or the club ace.  In either case, East will probably need both spade honors for an opening bid.  So I am inclined to play for the spade king and queen onside. 

We will find out about the club ace eventually.  Is there an easy way to find out about the diamond king?

Yes.  We could play the diamond queen at trick one!  I am not recommending that, on this hand, but it is a play worth remembering, and putting in your bag of tricks.  Flying up with the queen with Qx(xx) opposite stiff ace, to learn where honors are located, can be a very useful ploy. 

Suppose that you were absolutely certain that East held both the spade king and queen.  Maybe you did put up the diamond queen, and fetched air.  What is the best line of play then?

Well, if the spades are friendly, we can afford a trump loser, but need to generate an extra entry to dummy to play spades twice.  We can do that by winning the diamond and leading a trump, and, if West plays small, sticking in the eight!

East will certainly win, but a trump, or club, or spade, solves our entry problems.  So East must play back a diamond.  We ruff, draw trumps, ending on the table, and lead a spade, ducking an honor.  These will be the cards left:

Again, East can only exit a diamond, completing a dummy reversal for us.  We trump, and lead out the club queen and jack.  Those will both hold, but when we exit a club, East has to give us a dummy entry or play a spade. 

Back to the real world.  We play low from dummy at trick one, and win East’s jack with our ace. We try the heart ace, heart king.  West shows out on the second heart, discarding the diamond five, suggesting six diamonds originally.  We try the spade five from the table, and East puts up the queen.  Now what? 

We still need another entry to dummy, but it has to be right to let this hold.  West follows with the spade two, upside down count.  East cashes the trump queen, and exits with the diamond nine, which we ruff.  We try the club queen and jack next, but East holds off, as West suggests an even number of clubs.  This is the ending:

If spades were originally three-three, we can play to the trump ten and run spades.  But the carding suggests that West was 2-1-6-4.  The best reconstruction of the cards suggests that the full hand looked like either:

or

 

How can you land the hand on the first layout?  On the second? 

The endings are either

or

 

In either case, we should play a trump to the ten.  East must discard the diamond.  Now lead the spade nine.  In the first case, if East plays the four, we run the nine.  It doesn’t help East to cover – we win, and exit a club.  In the second case, we have to lead the spade nine to the four and jack, then exit our club. 

Which is better?  Looks like a toss-up to me.  At the table …? Nah.  Why spoil it.