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Make Aggression Pay.

Today’s deal seemed a little tricky both to reach game and then to make it. There were certainly losing options. How would you fare?

 

 

South’s double was a game try in spades, stronger than just bidding a competitive 3. Although North has a reasonable trump holding and a potentially well-placed Q, they are hardly maximum for their 2 action. Perhaps the most certain way to reach game would be for South to just bid it over 3! Let’s say our South did just that.

West led K on which East played 8 (reverse count) and switched to the J to your Q. What now?

The key to making 10 tricks is recognising your potential and indeed real losers. You have to lose two diamonds and the A and so cannot afford to lose a second club trick. That loser can be avoided in one of three ways, by ruffing a third round of clubs in dummy, by discarding the loser on Q or by setting up dummy’s heart suit for a discard. Only one of these ways would be successful and even then would require careful play.

The heart suit seemed the least likely way to success because of the presence of the 10 in dummy. That pointed strongly to the fact that West was switching to a short suit. Any attempt to even cash the A would bring instant failure.

Ruffing the club loser in dummy might appeal but the bidding above issued a warning to South. It would seem that East held K but it was likely they held more than that to justify their raise to 3. That would seem to be A, and had West  switched to a singleton heart, then the defence would soon have four tricks:

 

So, playing clubs would also have led to defeat. Yet, before playing a second round of diamonds to set up Q, declarer had to play two rounds of spades to prevent West gaining a heart ruff. Declarer had to play West for no more than two spades because if West had more, they would always be able to score a ruff.

Thus, the winning line at trick 3 was to play a spade to the king and a small spade back to A followed by a second round of diamonds. West had to win and either play a third round or open up the club suit, though there would now be a safe discard for the potential and indeed real deep club loser.

So, a good game to bid and an even better one to make. While East-West’s bidding did help South, West’s likely lead should be a high diamond on which both West and South should be able to ascertain how many diamonds East has, an important factor in finding the successful line for South.

Well, if you are going to chance your arm in game, you do want to end up with a plus score.

More for our JIN Club members tomorrow.

Richard Solomon

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