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Guiding partner.

Saving the Defence …for less experienced players and others.

There are times when you can see how the defence should go but that is not always apparent to your partner. Your task is to make it as easy as possible to follow the right route to beat the opponent’s contract.

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West Deals
N-S Vul
A 10 7 4 2
K 6 3
9 7 4 3 2
   
N
W   E
S
 
8 7 2
9
9 8 7 2
A K 10 6 5
West North East South
  dummy you  
1 NT Pass Pass 4 
All pass      

 

Your partner opens a 12-14 1NT after which South bids very quickly to game. Your partner leads a potentially quite good for the defence Heart-small6 with South winning the first trick with Heart-smallK.

Next comes Spade-smallK from South won by your partner’s ace to be followed by Club-smallQ from West . Over to you to save the defence. You really would like a heart ruff, maybe even two ruffs if you were being greedy. You have to convince your partner to switch to a heart. Plan the defence.

It seems evident that your partner is not aware how good their initial heart lead was. Perhaps they intended it just as a passive lead not wanting to give away anything on the opening lead. If they knew how good it was, they would have continued with a second heart.

So, it’s time to take stock and seek to try and guide partner. One important piece of information you know (and your partner does not) is that South has at most one club since your partner is marked with at least 2 for their no-trump opening. So, barring your partner opening 1NT with the singleton Club-smallQ, you must stop them from continuing the suit.

One way is to play a discouraging card on the Club-smallQ. If you play reverse encouragement at such a time, you could try the Club-small10 discouraging though your partner might wonder why they won the trick and you discouraged. Club-small10 might carry a suit preference meaning for a continuation to the higher red suit.

If you think that method would work for you, go for it. At the table, East tried a different approach. These were the four hands:


West Deals
N-S Vul
A 10 7 4 2
K 6 3
9 7 4 3 2
A 9 6
8 6 5 3
A Q 10 5
Q 8
 
N
W   E
S
 
8 7 2
9
9 8 7 2
A K 10 6 5
 
K Q J 10 5 4 3
K Q J
J 4
J
West North East South
1 NT Pass Pass 4 
All pass      

 

East decided to overtake the Club-smallQ with the Club-smallA, thus giving West the impression that South held the Club-smallK. Then East played Diamond-small9 as negative a card as possible in that suit. It seemed evident that West held Diamond-smallA for their opening bid. They had to to defeat the contract. The plan worked. From West’s point of view, declarer held the Club-smallK and they could see winners in both red suits in dummy. Furthermore, West could not see Diamond-smallJ and thus continuing that suit seemed dangerous.

Thus, the heart ruff secured the fourth trick for the defence after the three defensive aces had won tricks. Of course, a heart at trick 3 would have defeated the contract by two tricks as East could manage two ruffs. That would have been great for the defence but by taking four tricks, a defensive disaster was avoided.

East might have achieved that by signalling but also achieved the same end by creating a false picture of the club situation and by basically forcing their partner to play the right suit. It would have been a shame for the contract to have made after such a good opening lead.

 mission accomplished.jpg

Keeping it a secret

 
West Deals
E-W Vul
   
K J 9
9 8 7
10 6 4 2
10 9 3
 
N
W   E
S
   
West North East South
Pass Pass 1  2 
Pass 2  Pass 4 
Pass 5  All pass  

 

You resist the temptation, wisely, of showing any spade support for your partner during the auction though you now find yourself on lead to 5Club-small. What is your choice?

Richard Solomon

 

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