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Playing it Safe.

Recently, a declarer failed in their contract when a defender appeared not to go along with one of the guidelines given to new players..and profited from doing so! However, the declarer did not need to have “egg left on his face” at all.

 

North’s 2 was a weak 2, a 6-card suit and 6-10 high card points. East’s double was for take-out and South decided they would show their long suit too…and indeed bid it again when the opponents competed in spades. 3 won the auction.
West led the 10, covered by the jack, East’s queen and declarer’s ace. Which cards would you play at tricks 2 and 3?

South decided that they could ruff their losing spade in dummy. After that, they played dummy’s 8. East went in with their A and then played 5, not the friendliest of cards from declarer’s point of view.

South thought a little and remembered the guideline about not leading low from aces. Therefore, they put in the J…. but this is what happened:

 

The Q took the trick, to be followed by 4 to East’s A. So far, the defence had taken 3 tricks, A, Q then A. However, East played a third round of clubs which West ruffed with 6… and West still had K as a trick. The contract had been defeated.

That was very good defence but South should just not have let that happen. They had to lose AK and almost certainly A, maybe Q but there would be no other losers as long as they used that diamond suit promptly to discard a small club.

Watch. Ruff the small spade as before at trick 2 but then play AK discarding a club from the South hand. Then, either play a trump from dummy, or maybe play a club and see if you can guess correctly where A is. Even if you guess wrong, you cannot lose more than 2 clubs and 2 hearts because you can ruff the third club high in your own hand if need be. You have good trumps apart from missing the top 2. 

Naughty East!  Well, not really! By leading a low club away from the ace, they gave their side the best chance of scoring more than just the ace in that suit. The guideline about not leading away from an ace really only applies to an opening lead. Doing so in this instance was unlikely to cost and could as it did gain.

 

Could South have guessed correctly? Well, when one opponent makes a take-out double and the other does not have many high-card points, then they are more likely to have a missing ace. However, there would have been no danger to the contract had South played their top two diamonds before starting to draw trumps.

Richard Solomon

 

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