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Make the best of a bad bid!

Well, you have got to, haven’t you? The bidding is in the past. You have reached the wrong game contract and you could be heading for a disastrous result. That is no reason to give up.

 

 

The game is Matchpoints and those overtricks do count, a lot! After opening a natural 4+ 1, North paused after hearing 2 on his right and rebid his club suit. With club support and a spade hold, you decide to chance on 3NT.

Diamonds? No-one leads diamonds especially when they have bid and supported spades!

You are correct, too! West leads 4, but not before North gave another long thought before passing 3NT. You play Q from dummy and East contributes K. There really is no point in ducking and so you take your ace.

2 Questions

What was North thinking about after the 2 bid and over your 3NT bid?

How are you going to play this contract?

North, indeed, misbid. They should have realised that 2 after the 1 overcall, always promises at least a 5-card suit. With only 4 hearts, you would make a negative double. So, with 3-card heart support, North should have bid 3, even really 4 (13 working hcp and a very useful singleton) not 3. 3 shows a reasonable hand and after your 2 and the 2 bid, showing at least 10hcp, should not end the auction. Yet, it would have been wiser for North to have told you about their heart holding. You would then never have bid 3NT but 4 if partner had only bid 3. Even with only 10hcp, you knew about the double fit and that alone makes game worth a shot.

That was why North was pondering over 3NT. Should they have bid 4 even then? The answer was definitely “yes, please”.

Yet, they did not! At least West led a spade and not a diamond. How to make the best of this? You have A, and 5 heart tricks. All depended on bringing home the club suit without loss. Where is K?

South proceeded to cash 5 heart tricks before playing 8. It was South’s turn to err, not just practically but psychologically, too. We will see that North-South scored very well on this board because South inserted Q in dummy and all was very well:

 

5 heart tricks, 6 club tricks and A making +690, beating almost all in 4. A diamond lead restricts those in hearts to 11 tricks. After a spade lead, South can win, ruff a spade in dummy and via the club finesse make all 13 tricks, as long as the club suit is played correctly.

The club suit does pose a little problem if you lead 6 to Q in dummy. Next you play A and suddenly you find you have blocked yourself from getting to dummy to cash the last 2 clubs as dummy’s next highest club was 7 and South would be left with J8. To avoid this, South must either lead J or 8 on the first round. J is better and we will soon see why.

Finding the king!

Back then to 3NT and our South did at least anticipate a possible blockage in the club suit by leading 8 after cashing 5 rounds of hearts. However, their play of first cashing the hearts was wrong on two counts. Say West held all three missing clubs. The correct club card to play on the first round is J.

Then, West would almost certainly play K and you would need to get back to the South hand to take a second club finesse, of 10. If you had started with 5 rounds of hearts, there would be no way back.

The psychological game!

So, at trick 2, South plays J and not just for the above reason. Remember, South had not shown any club support. It might well be the correct defensive play even above for West to cover with K. That would give East a club trick if they held 982. West could not tell.

Also, many defenders cover J in this situation even when there can be no gain. It would take a very good defender, holding K10, to play 10 at trick 2. When the king appears, your problems will be over. And if they play 10 and you try to drop the singleton K in the East hand, pay West the compliment of their “in tempo” 10…and at the bar afterwards suggest to North that next time they do not just “think” of bidding hearts but actually do so! A lot less stress on you if they do!

Richard Solomon

 

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