All News

for Junior, Intermediate and Novice players..and others: It's Fri   day.

Even if you don’t know why.

There are times for a defender to change the line of attack (or more precisely defence) but generally pursuing the same line as your partner is the right way to go. Today’s story is more about what followed but firstly what would you lead against South’s 3NT contract with:

 

3 showed 7 clubs and about 6-10 hcp. What’s your choice of lead? Only a choice of three suits.. so, not too hard!

You will be relieved to know that as long as you did not lead a club (that’s a certainty!), you should defeat the contract even though the declarer is about to do something rather clever. West actually chose the best suit for the defence to lead, their longest, often a great choice. They started with 9. Let’s see all 4 hands:

 

Both 5 and 4are too hard to make. So, South had done well to choose 3NT though that too should be defeated. South thanked their partner for their dummy though would have hoped for a little stronger club suit. One can but hope!

South played well. They had to decide where to win the first trick and maybe thinking (correctly) they might need an entry to dummy later, won with K in the South hand…and then did really well to lead 2 not A.

South had to lose one club trick but did not want to lose two. So, there could be no cost in losing that trick immediately. When East showed up holding all 3 clubs, they might be annoyed at the bad break but their play had been correct and necessary.

However, all East had to do was return the suit their partner had led and the contract had to fail. They might not understand why but as is so often the case, it is the best defence. Alas for West, out came 3 and when South played low from their hand, J won in the dummy.

Now, South could finesse East for their remaining club honour, cash A and play that preserved A to get to dummy. 6 club tricks, A, J and AK added to 10 tricks.

Had East returned a diamond, South could finesse the club honour successfully but had no way back to dummy to run the rest of the club winners. They would have to lose 3 diamond tricks, a club and probably 1 trick in each major suit, maybe more, as well.

Returning a diamond was right for East for two reasons:

It was the suit partner led (even if 9 had looked a bit discouraging)

·       East could see the shortage of entries to dummy and knew declarer needed to play clubs from dummy to avoid a second loser in that suit.

 

have you read the textbook about returning partner’s lead?

Thus, the textbook defence of returning partner’s opening lead was the best defence.

However, let’s say that South earnt their piece of good fortune by their wise play at tricks 1 and 2 and when the heart was returned. 

Richard Solomon

Go Back View All News Items