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You Never Know your luck.

Today and tomorrow, we feature a couple of deals where the defence and declarer can earn themselves a piece of good fortune. That’s right. It does not come on a silver platter but if you do the right thing, you can and should be rewarded.

 

Today, we look at a piece of inspired defending. Well, wishful thinking.

1NT was 12-14 and 2 simple Stayman. You lead 4 and that goes to 2, your partner's 8 and declarer's A. Declarer then plays a club to the ace and a second club to their J and your Q, partner following suit. What now?

We did not tell you that it looked like your partner had a doubleton club though you could guess declarer had a five-card suit when that was the first suit they played. Yet, in that case, they would have 5 clubs and 4 hearts, a slightly unusual shape for a 1NT opening bid.

We did, though, mention that we are playing Teams where it is always handy if we can defeat the opponents’ contract and that while we would prefer to be stingy about giving away extra unnecessary overtricks, if they were given away in the slim chance of beating the contract, then the cause was good.

About to play to trick 3...and thinking!

So, here we are, in at trick 3. We could do “something or nothing”. “Nothing” means returning our remaining club and hope declarer goes wrong in their quest for 9 tricks. We could do “almost nothing” by continuing with another diamond. We know that declarer can insert the jack and earn themselves two more tricks in that suit, along with four club tricks. That would be seven tricks in the minor suits for the declarer having used only 8 of their 13 or 14 high-card points. Surely, they could muster a couple more tricks before the defence can get a little rich from diamond tricks?

We do know from South’s opening and North’s invitation our partner has around 6 or 7 high card points. We also know they have three hearts and surely five spades since we must presume declarer does not have a singleton anywhere: they opened 1NT. (not in this column, at least!) Of course, if South had just four clubs, then East may only have four spades but there is a good chance partner does have more than four spades.

Is that imagination working?

There would seem to be two chances.

We could play our partner to hold KQT and therefore, we could try leading a low heart and take four heart tricks.

What about spades? Dummy’s holding looks a little threatening. Yet, South is more likely to hold high card points in their longer suit. Could our partner have a decent spade holding like the AK… and the 9 to go with it? We do know that South cannot score heart tricks without losing the lead. We also know that if declarer held say Kx or Ax, and wanted to develop a couple of spade tricks, that our J will fall early to declarer’s advantage. Let’s hope that is not the situation.In addition, even if partner had that magic AK9 holding, they would have to do something clever, like ducking a round. Could they? Of course, your partner would be up for that!

"Are you there, partner?"

In reality, there is little to choose between the two situations we conjured up above. If we went for hearts, we would earn a good “well tried” from partner but not this day. However, despite dummy’s holding in spades, that was the suit to attack:

Put that J on the table. Declarer covers…and hopefully East thinks before playing what seems like an obvious cover. They could see that a spade trick had to be lost before their own suit could produce more than two tricks. They could draw the same conclusion about the minor suits as you did as West. Finding a duck of the Q is not that impossible….and if East did…

With four club tricks in the bag along with 2 or 3 in diamonds, South still needed a couple of heart tricks. Indeed, they needed to play on hearts before running clubs as their own discards from dummy might prove awkward.

So, declarer played J, needing probably just one heart trick. However, as West you could pounce on that and produce a contract the killing 3…and very soon hear from your partner, even from declarer, great switch. It was and it worked!

You may not have liked South’s choice of opening bid with a small doubleton spade. They could have opened 1. If that happened, North could well have ended up as declarer and, guess which suit your partner may have chosen to lead? Fourth highest of their longest and strongest would have worked out very well for the defence.

“Fortune favours the brave” with that spade switch seeming rather risky. It was but the reward for some good imaginative thinking was +100, even +200. Nice.

And the lucky declarer?

Well, not the one above who suffered the spade switch! Let’s look at this problem for tomorrow:

South could have invited game and might even have finished up in 3NT but they went all the way to game over 2. West led 2 to East’s ace with East returning 9. It looks like West has led away from a four- card diamond suit headed by the queen.

You have 26 hcp between the two hands though potentially too many losers. What to do? Oh, the trump break is favourable, both defenders having two.

 See you tomorrow.

Richard Solomon

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