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Discovery Play.

Sometimes, you can have a Plan B when your main chance of success fails. On other occasions Plan B involves recording a minus score. Like here.

 

There is a choice of two makeable slams here. Which slam has a better chance of success, 6 or 6NT? If a club/trump had been led, you would have a very comfortable 12 tricks in either contract. However, our West decided to lead a less helpful 10. East contributed 3. What is your line of play in 6NT?

The first statement above is not entirely correct. If you win and play A and West discards, your Plan B is to lose the club trick, bemoaning your bad luck, regain the lead and hope neither defender is left at trick 13 with a high heart. Small hope, really.

The same plan will occur when you lead a club towards the king and East discards. More bad luck, more faint hope. In reality again down 1.

Of course, much of the time the club break will be 2-1 and there is no problem. It might also be your lucky day in that you can pick up Q because you led correctly thus picking up Qxx, in whichever hand it is. But in which?

Reducing the Guess

Can we reduce the guess? The answer is maybe and it involves giving up the forlorn Plan B chance. At trick 2, we are going to lead 4 from hand and whatever West plays, play H2 from dummy. We were always going to lose that heart trick. Let’s lose it at trick 2 rather than at trick 13.

East won this trick with 10 and returned 7. Declarer won and cashed a third top spade. This was no time to play on clubs. On the third spade, East discarded a diamond. Are you counting? West had started with 5 spades and East with 2.

Next came  the two top heart winners. Once again, East discarded a diamond on the third round. Once again, West had started with 5 hearts and East with just 2.

Club Time

Next came your two top diamonds with both defenders following suit. How will you now play the club suit because the time has come?

The answer is that one defender cannot hold 3 clubs. You have no guess but a certainty as to which club to play first:

 

West started with 5 cards in each major and at least 2 diamonds. You can play low to the K and when West discards a major, you can feel very satisfied. A good piece of detection.

Of course, after playing the major suits as above, you may be none the wiser where both defenders had at least three cards in each major and at least two diamonds. Perhaps one defender held 5 hearts and the other 5 spades. You may get a feel for which defender had the 4 card majors but nothing as certain as the discovery above.

This line may even see you go a couple down, a possible loss at matchpoints where several went one down, a less serious possible loss of 2 imps at Teams. You may have discovered nothing but there will be days like this one when you have.

Ducking the heart early gave you a greater chance of discovering how many of that suit each opponent had. That’s why we cashed all our spade and diamond winners, too.

Any declarer who took this line deserved success over those who had a lucky or unlucky guess in the key club suit at trick 2.

No such play is available in 6 since a third round ruff in either major would spell certain defeat. 6NT scores better, especially at Pairs. 

Were you + 1440 or – 100 here? If the former, hopefully you took the discovery path.

Richard Solomon

With thanks to Tim Bourke

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