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Scoring well.

Stopping that Overtrick.

Well, you are playing Pairs and even if you cannot beat their contract, you do not want to concede any overtricks. That’s your aim with today’s problem. An under-trick would be nice but at least no overs!

 

You are playing Pairs where over and under-tricks do count. Your partner leads J. Using your signalling method, what card do you play to trick 1 (South wins with A) and to tricks 2 and 3 when South’s J scores and then West’s A? North-South are playing 5-card majors.

You would still like to score enough tricks to beat 4 though with your partner rather limited in high cards, that might be hard. However, there is one message you would like to get to your partner that switching to a heart would be a very good idea. The minor suits may not offer many tricks for the defence.

Thus, while it may be safe for your partner to continue clubs, this play is not going to develop tricks for your side. The fact that you hold 10 indicates that declarer has the K.

illegal signal!

There is one problem in requesting a heart switch. You do not want to spare a heart to say so, whether you play “low” or “high” encourage. At the table, East encouraged clubs by playing low and then threw 2 and 6. These discards did not encourage West to switch to a heart. In fact, when they were in with the A, they continued rather negatively with a third trump…and the opportunity was lost:

 

Declarer won the third round of spades in dummy and played a diamond to the king and a second diamond to the 10 and East’s ace. East could only exit passively in a minor and declarer’s small heart disappeared on the established Q…making 11 tricks and a poor score for East-West.

What could East have done to have got their partner to lead a heart? Every discard system has its day and any suit preference system requesting a heart switch would have worked here, that is a high diamond or, playing odds and evens discards, 8 (a high even card).

Failing that, all East can do is discourage a club continuation at trick 1 and then discourage diamonds by playing “high low” if you play “low encourage” or “low high” if you play natural encouragement. Partner may then read something like the true situation in the heart suit. Of course, playing high encorage, by discarding J at the first opportunity would be ideal to score one heart trick.

This highlights one of the big differences between the Pairs and Teams games. Saving the overtrick is handy at Teams but vital at Pairs if you want to score well….and if you observed that South could have played diamonds themselves at trick 2 or even by playing a spade to the king and then a diamond, you are correct… but they did not and offered you the opportunity to score above average on this board. Now, if you could do that all the time….

More than one imp at stake!

 

It's Teams and a fast and furious auction has left you, with almost certainly the least interesting of the four hands at the table, on lead. 1NT was 15-17 and the redouble was not for rescue! Go on, prove East wrong!

Your choice is?

Richard Solomon

 

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