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What you should know.

Sometimes a defender knows very little about a declarer’s hand. Sometimes you know or should know a lot more. Are you ready to put your knowledge into practice?

 

 

You, East, might have opened the bidding but did not. South’s pre-empt was raised by the strong North hand to game in hearts. Singleton ace is an awkward holding in the pre-emptor’s suit and is usually even worse in no-trumps than when that suit is trumps. So, 4 seemed a sound raise.

West led 9 taken in dummy with declarer playing 10. Declarer cashed A at trick 2 and led a low spade to K in their hand. Then they played Q to West’s K, discarding a club from dummy as you played 4 (low encouraging). Before we continue the play, what is the shape of declarer’s hand?

You may not know exactly what their heart suit is but you should know the exact shape of the South hand. If you have worked it out, then you should be able to defend correctly from here-on-in.

Are you ready?

At trick 5, West led J and South played low from dummy. Our East made the wrong play now but then South had erred too a trick earlier. Two wrongs did mean the contract was defeated but not in the way it should have been.

East knew South had 7 hearts. They knew either South or East had no more diamonds…but which? Unless a pre-emptor had no side-suit losers, which is very unusual, even opposite that strong dummy, they would have played the second high diamond at trick 2 had they held a singleton diamond. So, it looks like it is West who has the singleton diamond.

Similarly, if South had only 2 spades (Kx), they could discard a loser on the third round of spades. They did not. If they held K singleton, they would have played that card before A.  Therefore, they must have three spades. West’s count card on the first round of spades may have told you that . Also, we should be able to assume South does not hold 4 spades. If they do, then our defence does not matter.

So, South’s shape should be known as 3 7 2 1 and they did not/could not discard their small club very quickly.

 

South had made two good plays, that of false-carding with 10 at trick 1 and of ducking the J because they feared East winning the lead and playing back a diamond. Alas, they had casually thrown a club on the second round of hearts…and that was to be their downfall.

East did not overtake J with K and return a diamond. They left West on lead and West continued clubs. Ouch! South ruffed and continued with 10 won with J and with West exiting a spade, trapping declarer in the North hand with AQ and a fistful of diamonds headed by K. Declarer could cash the spades but West could ruff the K to beat the contract.

Lessons from the hand

What lessons are there to learn? Sometimes, you can count declarer’s hand fully as East could here. The contract could not be made as long as East overtook the J to play a diamond. East also knew their partner held 4 hearts.

A lesson too for South. They did not need all those diamonds on the table. It probably at the time did not seem significant which card they discarded on the second trump. It should not have been but it was. You never know.

Richard Solomon

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