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A Nice Play on “Jan’s Day”

You can sometimes, maybe quite often, rely on poor defence to assist you to make a difficult contract. However, it is so much nicer when you can manage to make your contract based on your own good play. Can you?

 

2 is a Weak Two in diamonds, 8-11 hcp. West led 4 to East’s 7 and your king. East started with J92 and four clubs. What’s your plan?

Jan Cormack

The Clue’s in the Bidding

“The bidding was the clue to the declarer’s winning line on today’s deal from a major Teams event. Even when the four hands are displayed, the successful play does not exactly leap out and hit you in the face! These were the four hands:

 

West led the 4. Looking at all four hands, it appears South must lose a diamond and three heart tricks unless the defence is kind enough to play hearts first for you. Can you see the way to 10 tricks?

Our clever declarer won K in hand and then played a club to the ace. Next came a club ruff followed by K and then two further rounds of spades finishing in dummy. Dummy’s fourth club was ruffed with South’s final trump.

Now came the coup de grace as South played 5 away from  AQ! This was the 6-card ending before that diamond was played:

 

West had to win the trick when 5 was led but was now without resource. A heart exit allows South to score a heart trick, losing just two hearts and a diamond or else a diamond into South’s AQ allowing a heart discard from dummy for the same three losers.

Alternatively, West could duck the first diamond meaning dummy’s 10 will score… and South will just lose three heart tricks.

On the bidding, South knew that the diamond finesse was almost certain to fail. This valuable piece of information gave South the clue to the winning line.

As long as trumps and clubs are eliminated before a diamond is played and as long as West holds both KJ, there is no way for the defence to defeat 4 as long as it was played by South.

Had East the J, South is no worse off than taking the losing diamond finesse. The big gain came when West held both diamond honours.”

Notice also that were East to win the first diamond trick with K (i.e. the finesse would have worked), the defence can still only take two hearts and one diamond trick.

A Minor Monster!  For less experienced players … and others.

 

Your system is Standard American based where 1 is always 4+ and a 1NT opening is 15-17. The game is Pairs. Where to from here?

Richard Solomon

 

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