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A sacrifice!

West’s defence on the following hand was a little unusual, a little direct, perhaps to your advantage but that does not mean you were going to be successful! A little question for you.

 

You just had enough high card points to respond to your partner’s 1 opening and 3 left you with the inevitable and unappealing 3NT bid. 3 was forcing to game and you cannot say you were worried about a diamond lead! 3 would have been asking for a diamond hold. Therefore, with your “monster” hand, you are declarer in 3NT.

West led A (unbid suit) and despite getting a rather negative 3 from their partner (natural signals), continued with K. Is the sun starting to shine? Well, maybe. Which card do you discard from dummy at trick 2? The game is Pairs. 

You think it matters? Well, it just might. You might decide to throw a spade (who needs them?) and would that encourage West to attack your “Achilles” with notable success!

Throwing a heart seems a little unusual. Unless you were void in the suit, you would surely be looking at that suit as a source of 5 tricks. Even if not, it would be an unusual discard which other than offering West a safe exit seems to be a rather strange choice and might just get West thinking.

What about throwing away a certain winner? Yes, surely the best choice here has to be a club? While AQJ will always produce two winners, it will surely convince West that their partner holds the K.

How about sacrificing a winner to make your contract? Indeed, West might have a plan. Lead a club and declarer will finesse losing to K and hopefully East has a spade holding like QJ…and will play Q…two spades, two diamonds and the K for down one. So, they hope! They may not you have such good diamonds. 

So, you throw a club. East and South play low diamonds. Did the plan work? West continued with….

 

….West did play a minor card, actually a third round of diamonds! So, you made 3 tricks in each minor along with 4 heart tricks (that 5^th heart was a loser after all!) for one overtrick. Had you discarded a spade, then you might just have seen West lead either a speculative A (East should play K under it, surely top of a sequence) or even a low spade. Remember West may just cash tricks to restrict overtricks. Either way, the defence would have scrambled the first 5 tricks.

West did really well to lead A and not a small diamond, did a little less well but was still on track for success by cashing K and then rather fell from grace. However, you have to do all you can to avoid that spade switch and throwing a spade kind of sends a bit of a message to the defence. Even playing Pairs, as you were, overtricks are secondary to making a contract, certainly this one!

Richard Solomon

 

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