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Good Planning, Good Luck, Good Result

The opposite is often true. A faulty line brings its deserved reward in failure. So, sometimes, sensible play will bring a little piece of good fortune and a good result. Keeping an eye on losers when playing in a suit contract is a great idea.

 

2 was a weak 2 with partner enquiring as to your strength and suit quality. 3 showed top of the range for point count and good suit quality (well, it’s kind of "good". I am sure you have had much worse for a weak 2 opening!). Very soon, you were trying to make 10 tricks on the 10 lead.

Losers were a bit hard to estimate. It looks like on most normal days you will lose one trick in each suit except diamonds. You may not lose a trump though there is always the chance (even such a good guesser like you are!) of finding two club losers.

Thus, winning the A to play a trump seems a fair start…but which trump? Any will work if East has Kx though the low spade is preferable if East were to produce singleton king. However, when you play a low spade, definitely best on the actual lie, East discards a low diamond. Now you must be careful not to lose two trump tricks. So, insert the J and West will take their king to continue with 5. You are in hand and have to take a finesse of the 10 on which East discards K. What’s going on?

You have not seen 9 but there is no guarantee that West holds it. While not guaranteed, they may have played that card if they had a sequence. Furthermore, that K seems to indicate where all the missing high hearts are. If you play a third trump now, you will be stuck in dummy and that may not be a great idea.

So, it’s time to face the inevitable. You have to play clubs at some point and while there is a danger of misguessing, it could and would be worse if you played a third trump to dummy’s Q at this point.

So, a club it is….and West plays 2…. and you?

Well, you will be delighted to know that you cannot misguess! Indeed, there was a little clue you can draw from East’s discard. With a spade void, all the missing heart honours and A, you might just have got a call from East. So, play West for the ace…but they had the queen as well.

 

 As you can see, you really did not want East to get the lead as a third diamond would have provided a second trump trick for West.  So, probably play K. However, you are not quite home yet. Your K scores after which you can play Q. However, that dangerous 10 was still at large and you needed a way back to hand to draw it. So, hoping that West does have the Q, you must exit J not 7. J forces the queen  with a club ruff enabling you to get back to your hand (West had switched to a heart.) and draw the that annoying 10 under your ace.

As predicted, a spade, a heart and a club loser. However, not all plain sailing with a little slice of good fortune needed along the way.

Richard Solomon

Note that had West led a heart initially or switched to a heart when in with the K, it was imperative for declarer to duck the first round of the suit or else that 10 would have defeated the contract.

 

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