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A Rare Opportunity.

When the opportunity to use a rare bid that has been in your “system tool-box” for 100+ years  comes up, do remember to use it. A shame if you forget. The same applies to the play of a hand. Such opportunities for some plays are rare. So, take advantage if you can.

 

 

Well, you have not underbid your 10 count! You do have a good trump suit though the rest of your hand is, shall we say, second-rate! Your partner has a passed hand of considerable promise. Even so, making 10 tricks looks tough. Some defensive help would be handy but  no, the initial lead is the 3.

Any thoughts on how to make 10 tricks?

Ruffing a club in dummy would be great and quite possible after an initial club lead. Alas, the heart lead has not helped at all. You can predict how the play would go if you won the A and played Q. One defender would win and swich to a trump. You play your second small club and the same will happen again. They will just await their third club trick along with one or two in diamonds…and that spells defeat. Back to the drawing board.  

Is there any other chance, a legitimate one? In theory, you could hope that one defender held KQx but you are short of the two further entries to dummy to take any advantage of that lay-out. No joy, there.

Have you looked at that diamond suit? If there is a rather miracle lie of the diamond suit, you could set up the suit before you draw trumps and while the defence can only take two club tricks. Come on. You have already led 2 off dummy at trick 2, haven’t you? And you are going to play 9 from your hand when East plays low. Welcome to the world of the intra-finesse.

 

 

 

When 8 loses to Q, you will be in the position next time to lead J from hand and hope. When there is no quick cover from West (or indeed when you see the K appear, you have to play this suit for one loser and run J if West plays low and play A if the king is played. Suddenly, you are feeling a lot better about the contract’s chances of success.

A cunning West may play 4 at trick 3. At the risk of suffering a diamond ruff, you must then play low from dummy with your J winning the trick. If West leads K, you win and unblock J from your hand. It’s easy… on a good day. On such a day, partner will be full of praise. On others, you may need to start justifying your raise to 4 which was a tad ambitious.

Of course, if all went according to plan..and the opponents had not taken their two club tricks, you will make an overtrick. That happened when both Ian Berrington and Brad Johnston were declarers in their ambitious game. Some other declarers even failed in 3 let alone 4.

Now, even this way of making your contract could be thwarted by a clever West defender. At trick 2, when you play low to the 8, West can play low, allowing the 8 to win. Although this may seem to reduce the defence’s diamond tricks to one, they were of course only due to take one any way. A second round of diamonds has to be won by dummy’s ace meaning that the defence now has to take three club tricks along with Q and will beat the ambitious contract.

That would indeed be fine defence. Maybe all those who failed to make 10 tricks suffered this fate? Maybe….

More for our JIN Club members tomorrow.

Richard Solomon

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