A criss-cross from the club

Sometimes neat things happen at the club and with the advent of breathalyzers, there are fewer people sitting around at the bar after play to review the nightly session.

I was playing this hand recently at the Otago Bridge Club, against two middling Intermediates (club Open players).

A board from the otago bridge club

West opened a weak NT and it went all pass, and the defence started somewhat inelegantly:

Spade-smallClub-smallDiamond-smallHeart-small

North East South West North East South
ADiamond-small 4Diamond-small 6Diamond-small 2Diamond-small      
KDiamond-small 5Diamond-small 8Diamond-small 3Diamond-small      
TDiamond-small 4Club-small QDiamond-small JDiamond-small      
    8Spade-small KSpade-small ASpade-small 2Spade-small  
9Diamond-small 2Heart-small 8Heart-small 3Heart-small      
7Diamond-small TClub-small 5Spade-small 6Spade-small      
7Club-small KClub-small 8Club-small 3Club-small      
  4Heart-small JHeart-small AHeart-small 5Heart-small    
      6Heart-small KHeart-small 9Heart-small 3Spade-small
7Heart-small QHeart-small ?        

 

At this point, South gets squeezed, as the layout of the remaining material cards is:

 

West   South   East

Spade-smallJ
Heart-small-
Diamond-small-
Club-small A96

      Spade-smallQ94
Heart-smallQ
Diamond-small-
Club-small -
    Spade-smallT7
Heart-small-
Diamond-small-
Club-smallQJ
   

 

When East wins the Heart-smallQ, South has no effective discard. A Club discard would allow West to play a Spade-small towards the Spade-smallJ; and the Club-small A9 will be good.

Spade-small discard will allow West to play the Spade-smallQ, which will drop the T and the J; and dummy's remaining Spade-smalls will all be high.


This position is what's called a criss-cross squeeze; but came up organically at the club. Sadly, correctly reading the squeeze here took you from -2 to -1, but it's still a neat position. Well done to John Revie to accurately read my discards and execute the squeeze in the endgame.

There are certainly comments that could be made on the bidding and defence prior to this position - if people feel the need to start a discussion around that; feel free - but I thought it was worth highlighting that such a 'rare' or 'difficult' position is liable to crop up "at the table", and there's no reason why you can't go right in similar positions when you're playing.

Started by Brad Johnston on 03 Mar 2020 at 01:33PM

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