June 11, 2014

There were two big swings on Monday night, and both hands featured interesting elements. Let’s start with a pushy game contract:

 

With no one vulnerable, partner opens two diamonds in second seat, and you close the auction with a jump to three notrump. West leads the club seven, five, ten, and your king. Plan the play.

Before I get to that, is the North hand a two diamond opening?

I like preempting nonvulnerable, particularly in first or third position. In first seat, there are two bad guys who may have good hands, and only one partner who might resent your consuming space. In third seat, once partner can’t open the bidding, anything by you is fine.

Second position, however, is very conservative. Preempts, in second seat, should be as constructive as they are ob-structive. The North hand does not qualify. Is it a two diamond opener in first seat?

Maybe. I can live with that.

What if, say, West opens the bidding with one club in front of you? Is this a two diamond overcall?

Again, that seems quite acceptable. Once West opens, the hand is very unlikely to belong to our side, and preempting may easily gain. But no one could criticize a pass. At our table, West did, in fact, open one club, and North passed.  Suppose the auction had proceeded:

 

At this point, North must compete for the partial. The opponents have a good fit, and we have a long suit, and around half the high card points. North must get to three diamonds. But how? I am sure you have some sort of Lebensohl available if partner opens 1NT and the next hand bids two spades. You may even play such gadgets if partner overcalls 1NT directly, but few partnerships have discussed such methods on this type of auction. To me, Lebensohl should still apply, and North should pull out a sequence to show a competitive hand with long diamonds.

At the table, South stayed out, and the auction proceeded:

 

Two spades made easily, while three diamonds might well have fetched.

The action, however, was in the poor game bid at the other table. In three notrump, you must get diamonds going, so you will lose a diamond, and the defense will have the club ace, and both top hearts. That’s four winners, and they are quite likely to win more clubs or hearts. Maybe the club jack is onside – that would be nice, but it rates to be off.  By the way, if the club lead is fourth best, then West has the club jack.  Why?

That’s the old Rule of Eleven:  Seven from eleven is four – four cards higher than the seven are in the other three hands, and we can see all four of those, the king, queen, nine, and ten.

So, if East ever gets in, curtains. Can you play diamonds to keep East off lead?

The best way to do that is to start diamonds from the table. You can lose a diamond to West unless East has both the king and the queen. So,

Option 1: Cross to the spade king and run the diamond jack.

How will this fare? Not well. Even if you keep East off lead, the position will be pretty obvious to West, and West can put partner in with a heart for a club through. For this to succeed, West would need a diamond honor and both heart honors – AK of hearts, AJ of clubs, and a diamond honor, yet West passed originally? Not possible.

Option 2: Diamond ace, diamond. That will keep East off lead whenever West has two diamonds. Unfortunately, East will get to signal on the second diamond, and, again, West will almost certainly find the heart shift.

Option 3: Play a low diamond at trick two!

That is not likely to keep East off lead – West will need a singleton king of diamonds, or KQ doubleton. However, East would not be able to signal, and it won’t be easy to find that heart shift. Indeed, if you make that sort of sneaky play, the defense won’t realize the diamonds are ready to run. If all goes really well, West will win the diamond and shift to a spade, giving you a tempo, and picking up the spade queen for your ninth trick.

Option 3 is your best hope – indeed, pretty much your only hope, so …

Here was the full hand:

 

At the table, declarer went for Option 1, crossing in spades to lead the diamond jack. Did West find the heart shift? No, a funny thing happened along the way. East covered the diamond jack with the queen. You can work out the rest of the story.

Covering honors on defense is a useful strategy, but only when, by covering, you can develop tricks for your side. If, for example, diamonds looked like this:

The defenders can only get one diamond trick if West plays the nine under the jack, but may get two tricks if West covers. Of course, South can’t develop many diamond winners unless dummy has several outside entries, and here, dummy had no entries left, so covering the jack was quite poor.

Don’t blindly follow adages like “Cover an honor with an honor”. Have a reason behind every play.

The other swing hand was this:

 

The auctions were identical: 1S by South, 1NT (forcing) 2C 3S, and four. West led the diamond seven (which could be third best from even). Plan your play.

There is no clear-cut line here, but I would certainly plan on playing three rounds of diamonds early, and shedding a heart. Even with that as a basic plan, we might try diamonds immediately, or after trumping one club, or after trumping both clubs.

If we plan to trump both clubs, we should win the diamond king in dummy. Then clubs, back to the diamond ace, club ruff. I don’t like this plan at all, for, even if diamonds are 3-3, someone can discard a diamond on the fourth club, and we lose a diamond winner.

How about: Diamond ace, three rounds of clubs, trumping on the table, diamond king and diamond queen. Here, too, we may go down when diamonds were 3-3, if, say, East can overruff the third club with the ten. This also fails pretty quickly if West had the doubleton diamond – West trumps and the defense leads two rounds of trumps.

So, it is best to play our diamonds right away. Play diamond ace, king, and queen, and throw a heart.
How do you continue if West trumps the third diamond?

That’s bad, but we are still home if the trumps are now 2-2. We can draw trumps, ending on the table, trumping a diamond high along the way. We’ll score four trump tricks, two diamonds, two clubs, the long diamond, and a club ruff – ten tricks.

Diamonds were, in fact, three-three, and continuing diamonds at trick two would land the contract easily. Neither declarer tried that, and the play at both tables became complicated. Our declarer succeeded, the other failed, and twelve IMPs swung.