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More of the same.

One of the least pleasant parts of defence (come on, admit it, you just love defending, don’t you?!) is finding discards. So, you only have to find three this time. That should be no bother, well, not really! Take a look.

 

1NT was 15-17 and 2 simple Stayman. No major but North confidently bid to game. You seemed to be on the right track when you led 5 and South had a maximum of three spades. However, it was not quite so promising when declarer’s Q won the first trick.

Next came 4 to South’s Q. It might have interesting had you played low (10) in tempo but no-one could blame you for winning your K and returning 10. South won this with J and cashed A and then played 7 which was about to lose to East’s 8.

East returned 10 to declarer’s ace. Next came a fifth round of diamonds. In case you are not counting, which three cards have you discarded up to this point? Your partner has had to follow suit throughout though they will be discarding to this 5^th round of diamonds. Unfortunately, if it makes any difference to you, you are discarding first. So, which three cards have you discarded? A heart and a spade have been discarded from dummy. 

We will look shortly at what you might have done to avoid a catastrophe but partner’s 10 did indicate you had done well in avoiding playing a second spade when in with K as with no J yet appearing, it appears that South had started with AJ2. You avoided giving South three spade tricks.

One discard is easy….a low club but what about the other two? As we shall see, there were five cards you had to keep… and only one of them was a spade..the king!

 

The theme here is exactly the same as the one we highlighted on Friday to our JIN Club players, that of keeping the same length of any four card-suit bid by declarer or dummy, except we could extend it here to any four-card suit held by declarer or dummy. That club suit in dummy might not look that threatening but it was.

Throwing a heart after that club seems fairly normal as your second discard… but what was your third? By the time the fifth diamond was played, you had some idea of South’s high card points, AJ and AQJ. As they were limited to 17 hcp, they could not hold both A and A. They might hold neither in which case, it hardly mattered what you threw.

On the above deal, it mattered big-time. Let’s say you kept your 2 spade winners and four of your small clubs, thus discarding your second heart. Your partner throws 2, encouraging. How are you feeling? Wished you had kept a heart? No worries because these are the last 6 cards after 2 rounds of spades and 5 rounds of diamonds:

Up to this point, South has two spade and three diamond tricks. So, to succeed, they need four club tricks. If South has AJx, nothing can be done but where South holds just two clubs, then your discarding mattered a lot! The defence would take two diamonds, 9 and two spades, or else two tricks in each red suit and K if declarer left dummy with a heart after cashing three top clubs. 

You, West could have kept a heart and thrown a winning spade but you had to keep 4 clubs.

At trick 1, East could have confirmed they did not hold J by playing 10, hardly the card you would play with J10x. Some play Smith Peters where they could play an unusually high diamond at trick 2 if they liked your opening lead….though here the 8 was too valuable to play.

Another way to defeat the contract would be to switch to a heart when in with K. West would be really unfortunate if South held KQx and even then the defence might score 5 tricks before declarer got to 9. Not on this day with East switching to a spade when in with K. Even if South ducks this, the defence can score three hearts, K and K. If South takes A, they still have to lose a second diamond and thus the contract.

That is what might have happened. There were thus other ways of defeating this game and the particular one West took should still have been successful if 4  s    were left in their bag!

One nice red suit: one less attractive!

 

East opens a 2-way Multi 2, weak 2 in a major or 20-22 balanced. 2 is Pass or Correct and 3 is natural.

Do you agree with your original pass? What would you do now?

Richard Solomon

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