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Guiding Partner, Avoiding Disaster!

Sometimes as a defender you have to work out what to play next. Then there are times when your partner gives you a good clue, trying to be helpful. There are also deals where you have to guide partner into the best defence. What do we have here?

 

Everyone has their say in the bidding! You may be a little short in high card points for your 2 overcall but you do have an interesting shape! The news gets even better when your partner finds a heart bid. Time to jump to game! Yet, the opponents hold the spade suit and you decide to defend 4 as the vulnerability was not in your favour.

So, you lead 5. Your partner wins the first trick with A and plays A. Using your methods, which card do you play to the A and why?

Well, have you got a plan? You have two tricks in the bag and you need two more to beat the 4 game. One of them may well come from the K but what about the setting trick?

Wouldn’t it be lovely if partner played a diamond for you to ruff? Then you can play K and the contract will be beaten. A great plan. How though to get partner to play a diamond?

Well, even though you do like clubs (holding the K), you must say to your partner: “I do not like clubs. Please do not continue with a second club."

With no hearts left in dummy, there seems little point in continuing that suit. That diamond suit in dummy must look quite threatening to East. Therefore, there seems no reason to switch to a trump. So, hopefully, at trick 3, partner got the message you sent and switched to a diamond.

 

You can see that if East did not switch immediately to a diamond, South would make 10 tricks. If East played a second club, you would win but could not give your partner a ruff…10 easy tricks for South, discarding hearts on dummy’s diamonds(as long as they remember, firstly to draw trumps without touching diamonds and then to overtake the second round of diamonds with a high honour in dummy).

So, it was imperative you told/advised your partner not to continue with clubs. Hopefully, they would have got the message though in several cases, 4 did make.

That would be doubly bad for East-West as 5 was unbeatable had they bid on, just two spade losers. A double game swing against your team is a terrible result in a Teams match.

Of course, a very inspired East might have switched to a low diamond at trick 2, hoping you are the one with no diamonds and at the same time requesting a club return. You play a low club and will then get a second ruff, down 2 in 4.

Avoid Disaster!

Yet, where the A was cashed at trick 3, it was vital you discouraged a club continuation. This time, you were the boss, advising your partner of what should be the successful, indeed only, successful defence at that point.

Richard Solomon

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