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For Junior, Intermediate and Novice members…and others! It’s Fri day.

Seems Automatic?

The last thing you want to do as a defender is to help the declarer. Defence is not easy. You may have heard that before! You have to be alert all the time. A situation like this catches out those who are not thinking too much about what they should play:

 

Well, you might have overcalled 1 but you did not. You were vulnerable and you held a poor suit in a poor hand. You might have made a weak jump overcall (2) but that seemed even more dangerous given the vulnerability. So, silence this time. No worries. The opposition bid up to game swiftly and your partner led…a heart of course! 9. No need to bid the suit to get it led. Wonderful.

Declarer thanks partner for their dummy and calls for Q….and it’s you to play. Well?

Without too much thought, you play your king to force out declarer’s A. Declarer then plays a club to the ace in dummy and calls for 9 and for better or for worse, you decide to play your K which holds the trick. You try a second round of hearts which declarer wins with J, your partner following with 3.

A second club to dummy is followed by a low spade (well, they were all rather low!) to South’s 10 and your partner’s J. Correctly, to draw 2 of the declaring side’s  trumps for just one of the defence’s, your partner plays A as you discard a heart. Three trump tricks for the defence so far. Only one more trick needed. Alas, there were no further tricks for the defence as these were the four hands:

 

10 was played from dummy with declarer discarding a diamond from their own hand. South could eventually ruff their club loser in dummy with AK and Q all taking tricks…. making 10 tricks. Yet, that analysis on the board said 9 tricks was the limit in spades. East was bemused until the embarrassing question came from their partner: “why did you play your K at trick 1?”

East looked puzzled because it seemed normal to play their K to beat Q. West suggested that they should think about the opening lead and then they might have reached a different conclusion. If there was any doubt about West’s heart holding, then the presence of 8 in East’s should have confirmed that West was leading a short suit, looking for a ruff. They either had 9 singleton or as in the actual case 9 the top of a doubleton.

In that case, East knew that South had both A (we never under-lead an ace in such a situation at trick 1) and J. If West had led a singleton heart, giving South three, it did not matter which heart East played but on the actual lay-out, it did, big time. Had East played a low heart at trick 1, South’s J would fall under the Q and were a second heart played from dummy, East must again play low. A wins the trick and on the third round of hearts from dummy, East can then play K knowing declarer has to ruff or lose the trick.

South had to lose three trump tricks and there was nowhere for their losing diamond to go, either. That was why Deep Finesse analysed correctly that 9 tricks was the limit.

Only cover an honour with your honour if covering will or could benefit your side. East should have realised that playing K could never help the defence. Picking that one’s partner has led a singleton or doubleton is not always easy but on this day, there was plenty of evidence that was the case. So, be careful before you cover an honour played by the opposition. South really hoped to see K appear (that was why they played Q) and got their wish. ☹

Richard Solomon

 

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