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Jan’s Day: Just a matter of trumps.

You are in small slam and have three suits with aces and kings to burn. The fourth suit is the trump suit, the only one that requires any care in order for your slam to succeed. Some days you can play trumps, too, in such a contract for no losers. Often, you will have just one loser. That’s fine, too. What you do not want is to find you have two losers. Surely, that will not happen on this day?

 

 

West leads Q. Plan the play.

    
Jan Cormack

Jan’s Day: Perils of Safety

“A safety play is the play of a suit in such a way as to protect against an abnormal or bad break in that suit, thereby minimising or eliminating the danger of losing the contract. Since in most safety plays the declarer sacrifices a possible overtrick to assure his contract, such a play is generally losing tactics at match-point duplicate play and is mostly confined to Rubber or Teams/ Swiss style events.

Following is a deal at Rubber Bridge where South is the declarer in 6. (hands shown above)

South wins the opening lead with K. If the four outstanding trumps are divided 2-2 or 3-1, there will be no problem, since in these cases, South cannot lose more than one heart trick. But if a 4-0 break exists, danger exists.

The proper safety play technique, to avoid the loss of no more than one trump loser, is to lead a low heart from hand at trick 2, and when West follows with a low heart, to insert 8 from dummy. Either the 8 will win the trick or else will lose to East’s J or Q, in which case trumps break 3-1 or 2-2. Declarer’s ace and king will pick up the remaining trumps. However, this safety play proved to be the winning line as the trump losers were held to one:

 

Here, then is another safety play illustration:

 

West leads the J against South’s 4 contract. Dummy’s king wins the first trick with East contributing the Q. With 10 sure tricks (four trumps and two tricks in each of the side suits), the safety of the contract is the sole consideration.

Q is led (many an East erroneously can be induced to cover with the king if they possess it). When East follows with a low spade, Q is overtaken with A and a low trump is then led towards 9. West wins with K and the declarer is safely home with 10 tricks.

As can be seen, if the trump finesse had been taken, it would have lost. West would have returned a diamond and South would have been hard-pressed to explain to her teammates how a cast-iron contract had not been made.”

 

The difference between the two deals above is in the danger of a ruff. In the first case, with only four clubs between the declarer and the dummy, the chance of an 8-1 break is so minute, much smaller than the chance of a 4-0 trump break. South, there, had the no cost opportunity of giving up a trump trick, perhaps unnecessarily but to avoid losing two tricks.

In the second hand, it is quite possible that East had to play Q over their partner’s J, rather than choosing to do so. Thus, suffering two trump losers would mean certain defeat for South. South’s trumps were sufficiently good so that they could in effect squander the Q, having no intention of playing low from their hand whichever card East played. Notice, if East held Kxx, they could not get to their partner’s hand quickly to score a diamond ruff. In the actual deal, the diamond break was a more normal 6-1 break.(no 8-0 break!) Scout’s honour. “Be prepared.”

Beating the Gambler? for less experienced players and others

 

South’s opening bid shows a long solid minor suit. The hand will not hold an ace or a king in any other suit.

Obviously, from your holding in the minor suits, the suit is clubs…and it is your lead?

Richard Solomon

 

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