July 22, 2013 – Tempo

I haven’t given you any suit combinations in a while.  Time for another:  This is your spade suit,

 
What is the best way to play this suit if you need to win four tricks in spades?

For that you need a miracle.  Suppose you only need three winners, what is the percentage play?

There are only two layouts that will let you win four tricks –

or

 
In the first case, we start with a low spade, scarf up that singleton king, and finesse for the jack twice.  In the second case, we start with the queen, and pin the singleton jack.  These two cases look equally likely, so, how should you choose?

That’s easy.  The bidding, opening lead, and early play will give you plenty of distributional clues.  If the clues suggest that West is short in spades, play for the singleton king – which some wag dubbed the kingleton.  If the clues suggest that West has long spades, go for the jack squash. 

My Suit Play program says the best line for three tricks is to finesse twice against West, starting with the ten, nine, or eight.  Finessing twice will net three tricks unless East has both the king and the jack.  East can be dealt both these cards in eight ways – KJ alone, KJx (three ways), KJxx (three ways), or all five spades (one more way).  If we start with a low spade from hand, and East has all five spades, we will see West show out, and can change horses.  So, leading the queen loses 8 times, leading a lower spade loses in only seven cases. 

There is another approach ignored by my software, but one that, at the table, might be even better – start with a low spade from dummy, to the ten.  If it loses to the jack, finesse West for the king later.
This line seems to work if either player has both the king and jack, but loses if West has a singleton J, one case, Jx, three cases, or Jxx, three more cases.  So it also works in all but seven cases.  However, when the suit is like this, where the line should lose:

   
many East players will rise with the king, solving our guess.  Here is a really tough question for you – if both lines work in all but seven cases, and if leading low to the ten gains against a common misdefense, why does SuitPlay prefer the double-finesse?

There are two reasons:  First, suppose we lead the four from the table, and East plays the king.  Do we lead the ace or queen next?  How can that matter?  Well, the suit might lie like this:

or like this:

 
At least some of the time, when we lead low from dummy and East plays the king, we will go wrong. 

Here’s the second reason.  Suppose the suit lies like this:

Things are going great – we lead the four to our ten and West’s jack, then finesse West for the king later.  Only West has different ideas.  West wins the ten with the KING, not the jack!  We later play low to the ace, and find ourselves with another loser. 

Against expert defenders, we will face a guess later if we start low from dummy and lose to the king in either hand.  So this line has substantially more than seven losing cases.  More typical defenders will not duck with Kx in the East hand, and certainly won’t win with the king in this last layout.  Against such a defender, starting low from dummy will lose only to a singleton or doubleton jack with West, and a singleton king with East – five losing cases.

Good!  Of course, in a real hand we often have clues from the bidding as guides.  If the bidding marks East with the king, then double-finessing through West is quite poor. 

Two hands to discuss this week.  Both hands were about tempo – setting up winners before our time (and trumps) run out.  Try board 8 from declarer’s perspective:

With no one vulnerable, the bidding went:

West starts with the diamond ace and continues with the queen of diamonds, which you trump on the table.  Plan your play. 

This is a pretty thin game, which is not surprising.  We showed our values when we jumped to two hearts, and so had nothing in reserve.  Bidding four hearts was a bit too much.  Let’s count our winners and losers:

 

1.  We’ve lost a diamond, rate to lose at least one spade, and will certainly lose to the club ace.  That’s only three.  So far so good.
2.  We can probably win four heart tricks, and the diamond ruff in dummy for five.  Three spades and two clubs will get us to ten. 

All this suggests that we need the ace of clubs onside.  Let’s assume that.  How are the spades split? 

East doubled us, and this feels to me like one of those Junior penalty doubles – I’ve got a lot of points and partner opened the bidding, so you must be going down.  My guess is that East has around eight points.  Perhaps the king of diamonds, ace of clubs and a jack or two, or the king of diamonds, king of spades, and a couple of jacks. 

Most players with eight points would bid over 1D-X, particularly with a major suit.  This suggests that East does not hold four of either major.  Good.  Bad splits would make this really tough.  Where is the king of spades?

Remember, we are assuming that the club ace is onside, since we can’t make four hearts otherwise.  So East will have the spade king.  This is the suit combination I gave you above, but much easier in this context.  Spades rate to be three-two, and East has the king, so we can get three spade tricks easily by leading from dummy toward our hand, and putting up the queen. 

Okay.  We need to win two finesses – West must have the ace of clubs, and then, by default, East will have the spade king.  The basic plan is to lead twice towards dummy’s king and queen of clubs, and lead towards our spade queen.  Maybe the hand will look something like this:

 

Should we draw trumps?

No!  If we draw trumps, we will have only one trump left, with two cards to knock out.  The defense will win the first one, and play another diamond.  There goes our last trump.  They’ll get in with the other card and run bunches of diamonds.  Tempo, tempo, tempo.  We need extra trumps to win the race home – we need those trumps to guard against further diamond plays.

 
There are several ways to succeed here.  For instance, we can play a low spade at trick three, putting up the queen if East ducks.  Then a club to the king, spade ace, spade.  With spades set up, we can now draw trumps and lead another club up. 

Here was the full hand:

 

At the table, West led the diamond ace, and then shifted to a spade, losing a tempo.  Declarer, worried that this might be a singleton, won the ace, and drew trumps.  That was okay, however, since there were two cards to knock out and a trump left in each hand for diamonds.  Unfortunately, declarer trumped a diamond next, and lost the tempo race, finishing down two. 

The only lead that would set the contract by force is the club ace.  In general, when partner leads a card that will often be a singleton, our signaling priorities change.  Third hand should give suit preference, not attitude.  Here, East should play the club four at trick one, and South should play the seven, to make the four hard to read.  If West can recognize the four as the lowest club, West will lead a low diamond to the king, to get a club ruff.  No other defense works.

Here is my other exhibit – board 1:

The auction was a bit too exuberant:

 

This is a truly terrible game contract, off a probable three heart tricks, and at least one trump trick, and quite often more.  So, was North really insane?

That North hand is very tricky to evaluate.  Ideally, North would transfer to spades and show clubs, invitational, but three clubs would force to game, so methods boxed North in.  Game will often be decent if partner has a spade fit, and atrocious otherwise.  North took the high road, and I don’t think this was such a bad gamble.  If you are going to gamble with the North hand, then showing clubs can only help the defense find the best opening lead.  Maybe, without any help, the hand will look like this, and the defense won’t lead hearts.

Sure enough, West led the club three, using fourth best leads, against four spades.  You play low from dummy, East puts up the queen, and you win the ace.  Now what?

That’s easy.  Get rid of those heart losers on the diamonds.  So you cash the diamond ace, king, and queen, dumping hearts.  This leaves:

 

We have lost no tricks so far, and have only one sure loser – the trump ace.  Still, our trumps are thin and we have plenty of clubs to worry about.  Two questions for you:

1.  Who has the club jack?
2.  Who has the club nine?

Third hand usually plays the lower of touching honors, so the play of the queen typically denies the jack.  East may be fooling you (and West), but your inclination should be to place West with the club jack.  As for the nine, suppose you were East and saw this club layout:

       
Partner has led the suit, and won’t underlead an ace against four spades, so South has the ace.  If South has the jack as well, our queen is dead, but if partner has the jack, we can force a club trick by playing the nine, not the queen.  Since East did not play the nine, East doesn’t have the nine.

Okay, we’ve worked out that West has led from either J93 or J953 in clubs.  Either way, we can potentially pick up the entire club suit by leading the seven or eight next, and running it if West plays the five. 

If West started with four clubs, we will need to get back to hand again for another club finesse, and East will trump the next club, but – tempo – that’s fine by us.  Maybe the full hand will look like this:

 

 
 

You can follow the play with the next button.  There is no defense here, providing we run the club eight next. 

The full hand was very close to this:

 

Notice, the spades were as friendly as could be – three-three with the spade jack onside.  So, we could pick up the trump suit for only one loser.  We could, for example, win the club, play three top diamonds, and lead the spade six to the ten.  How would that work? 

Again, use the next button to see how the play might develop.  The only way to bring this one home is to take our diamonds, and run the club eight.