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It is time for a piece of defending today, an example perhaps of how difficult this can be. Yet, the solution is quite simple and logical. Let’s set the scene:

 

There’s nothing complicated in the bidding. South opened a 15-17 1NT. North used Stayman. Both declarer and dummy showed a major but not the same one. Therefore, they came to rest in 3NT.

You lead 6 to your partner’s 10 and declarer’s K. South then played KQJ. Both you and your partner used their spade cards you held to indicate liking of diamonds, “Smith Peter” style. Your partner’s signal was to say he held J, though in winning the opening trick with K, it would seem logical that the J was not in declarer’s hand. You did not need a signal from your partner to say that.

After those top spades, with A still in dummy, South exited with 6 and your 10 won the trick with your partner playing 9, reverse count style.

That’s a long introduction to the phrase “Plan the defence” or “what do you play next?

It seemed logical to West to continue diamonds and hopefully win the lead in hearts to cash winning diamond tricks. So, that is what happened but before a heart was played, South had come to 9 tricks. What went wrong?

A piece of counting along with taking into account East’s play to that first round of clubs would have helped.

The important point was that East seemed to be showing a three-card club suit. Why did declarer play on club rather than hearts?

Let’s look at all four hands, though before you do, did you find the winning defence?

 

 

Declarer won the diamond continuation with A, cashed A and then played 3 winning club tricks (4 spades, AK and 3 club tricks). As West, you had to take the somewhat unusual approach of cashing AK and exiting a club. South could take their 3 club tricks but those 2 aces were stranded in dummy and a rather surprised East could win the last 2 tricks with J10. Down 1.

The point is if South had the normal no-trump shape (with a second diamond instead of the 5^th heart), there was no defence. Declarer had 9 tricks. It would seem the only hope was that there was something amiss...and there was. Since West knew declarer had 4 clubs, there seemed little to be lost by cashing the high hearts. Had South needed a heart trick, or an entry to dummy, they could always have exited a heart to good effect if West had just exited a club.

Opportunity lost for the defence, especially as the contract was in fact cold, as long as South did not cash his spade winners when they did. They were his means of communications to “keep in touch” with the dummy hand.

Had South exited a small club at trick 2, his contract could not be beaten with both spades and clubs breaking evenly. Say West exited a diamond. Declarer can win, cash the club winners and then take 4 rounds of spades. By playing the spades early, South gave the defence a chance, hard to take but West did have enough information to know that the standard defence would not work.

Richard Solomon

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