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Where is she?

The search for the queen.

You have all the aces, all the kings, and a couple of significant queens. You even have the jack of a significant side-suit. You have a 9-card trump fit and drawing the missing trumps is not to be a problem. You are in grand-slam and you are in trouble!

“Thank you, partner” are the words you utter inspecting dummy. Unfortunately, you can count 13 cards there because otherwise the Q might be hidden under the A…but no. It looks like you are going to have to find it because it is neither in your hand nor in dummy!

What’s your plan?

 

 

You have relay in your methods but an opponent’s 2 overcall put pay to that. After East passes, you had started with a strong artificial 1 (15+ hcp) and West raised that suit one level. Partner doubled, unearthed the spade fit and used Key Card to discover you held AQ and all three side-suit kings.

So, there you are in 7 on the lead of 3. You insert J at trick one and much to your surprise East produces Q. What’s the plan? At most, West has overcalled vulnerable with no more than two jacks and one queen…and one round of trumps shows they have not got one of those jacks!

So?

Well, you may as well draw trumps first of all. You lay down your ace and West discards a club. At least it is East who has all the spades. You are still alive. You draw all East’s trumps via a finesse and note that West discards in total three clubs and a diamond.

It’s time to introduce you to North-South. This deal occurred in the finals of the Hamilton Labour Weekend Congress and North-South were Julie Atkinson and Pat Carter. It was Patrick who was entrusted with the job of making 13 tricks.

One obvious way was to simply take a second round heart finesse…..low to the ace and low to the jack and in a vacuum, you had a 50% chance of being successful. However, Patrick wanted to gather what information he could before perhaps resorting to that approach. Perhaps West had helped him with the overcall. Maybe there was some extra information to discover.

In Patrick’s own words, “I then played 3 rounds of diamonds to see the lay-out in that suit. When both opponents followed to three rounds, it looked clear that West held six clubs:

Not 5 clubs because with Qxxxx, East would surely have raised.

Not 7 clubs because then they would have pitched 4 clubs rather than unguarding J10xx. When they had 6 clubs, they were worried I had 3 clubs and couldn’t ruff the 3^rd in dummy because I had to draw 4 rounds of trumps. Therefore, they could not afford to throw more than three clubs in case they set up a third round of clubs in my hand, if I had held a third club.

So West is definitely 0346 and I can only succeed if East has doubleton Q or doubleton 10. Which do you play for?

I played the K noting the promising 7 from East and ran the J. Had West held three small hearts, they might have discarded a heart instead of a diamond from JT73. So, I played West to hold Q43.”  

 

Bullseye!

Patrick commented: “what would I have done if East had dropped the 10 under my K. Should I play them for Q10 doubleton? I am glad I wasn’t put to the test!”

West had intended by their call to make their opponents' relay a little harder. The overcall actually knocked them out of relay. Ironically, had they relayed the board, Julie, North, would have discovered Patrick’s shape and that the Q was missing. She would have known that 13 tricks were at best on a finesse and had no play if Patrick did not hold the J. Therefore, they would have stayed in small slam.

  
 
Patrick and Julie 
Along with teammates Barry Jones, Alan Grant and Jeremy Fraser-Hoskins, this board helped them to 2nd place in the event. 

There were six tables in play and the other five tables all played in 6. Three made 12 tricks after a minor suit lead. At one table, West gave away the overtrick with a small heart lead and at the other the Q lead at trick 1 ensured a very quick claim for all 13! Maybe the moral is that such overcalls do not always succeed though had the South hand been exactly the same but 5341 shape, 13 tricks would have been 100% except where either defender held all 4 trumps (and even then, cold as long as East held the trumps and the diamond break was 3-3 or East held 4 diamonds). The uncontested relay auction would certainly have disclosed South’s shape.

It seems the play at Julie and Patrick’s table took longer than that at the other 5 tables added together. No two guesses as to why! So, well played, Patrick.

Richard Solomon.

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