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New To The Table. The Play of the Hand.
Squashing Honours.
We left you on Friday in a rather precarious contract after a very difficult bidding sequence. Let's hope we did not use up all our energies in the bidding! We needed to get 10 tricks with spades as trumps:
| South Deals None Vul |
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| West | North | East | South |
| 1 ♠ | |||
| Pass | 2 ♦ | Pass | 2 ♠ |
| Pass | 3 ♣ | Pass | 4 ♣ |
| Pass | 4 ♦ | Pass | 4 ♠ |
| All pass |
The opening lead was 
2.
How many losers do we have? Trumps do not look very solid and we must lose the 
A. We have a heart loser (
A) and must also lose the 
A. We have to hope that clubs break evenly (3-2 break). So, optimistically, we only need lose 3 aces.
Can we avoid losing any of those? After a diamond lead, the answer is “yes”. We could discard our heart on the second round of diamonds. To do that, we must win the opening lead with A and play the king underneath in order to play Q. We did also notice that the opening lead was 2, not from an honour and therefore maybe a singleton. Too bad if West ruffs. At least we will get rid of our heart.
That is what happened and these were the 4 hands:
| South Deals None Vul |
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West ruffed and tried to cash the A…. too late. Ruff and play a trump. West won their ace and played a second heart to the queen…but you ruffed that and played Q and J and all the defence’s trumps fell enabling you to force out the A and make 10 tricks. Phew!
our 
their 
As we know, a number of good things can happen when you reach a dicey game contract. There can be a fortunate lie of the cards enabling you to make your contract, a lucky opening lead.. and there is always the chance of misdefence. All three happened here!
Have you noticed how many errors West made in the defence?
The opening lead. Even before West saw dummy, they could be certain of two trump tricks. The 10 would be a certain trick because dummy would have very few spades. There was no need to lead a singleton to try and make a second trump trick. They also held the A, an ace in an unbid suit. The defence just needed one more trick. A might well be a better start for the defence as it was in this case.
When in with their ruff at trick 2. South was in such a hurry to discard a heart that it seems unlikely that South had more than one heart. One way to score a third trump trick was if East held A as declarer would not enjoy a third round of diamonds. Therefore, playing a club or even a low spade to the king (what card would come next from dummy? It might be to West’s advantage. ) would be better than playing A.
One last chance. Playing low on the first round of spades would benefit West but having taken their ace, they just had to play a club to try and set up a third trump trick for the defence. East wins and plays a diamond. If South ruffs with J, the 10 becomes a trick. If South ruffs lower, West ruffs with the 10.
Thus, 4 should have been defeated though it is not always so easy when you do not see all four hands. West’s initial lead was not the best and they then rather gave up when their A was ruffed.
There may still be hope. Never give up…whichever seat you are in.
Richard Solomon
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