All News

                    Immediate Action Needed.

Defence can be very personal in that although every pair defending a board has the same aim, they may well go about it, with their signals in particular, in a different way. How would you defend with the following East hand?

 

Many would have opened that North hand at either the 1 or 3 level but North passed. However, when their partner showed a weak 12-14 1NT, they could not resist jumping to game.

Your partner leads A. Plan the defence. It looks like urgent tricks are needed before declarer pounds out clubs.

A common style is to lead a king against a no-trump contract to ask partner to throw away any honour they may hold and if they do not have any, then to give count, natural or reverse depending on your preference. A typical holding for this lead would be AKJTx or KQ109x, so that they can ascertain a the missing honour is and how quickly it would fall if in declarer's hand.

However, in the deal above, West led the A and where you have a choice of leading the ace or king, the ace will ask their partner if they like the suit. Typically, West would have AKx or AKxx. They can retain the lead and switch if the answer is negative or continue if they get a positive signal from partner. West would not hold AKxxx or AKQxx as with the former, they may elect to lead low and with the latter start with the king, for count.

So, what’s to be done with the East hand above? East made the mistake of encouraging the heart continuation and with that went the defence’s chances of taking five quick tricks:

 

West continued with two rounds of hearts and the Q was trick number 9 for a relieved declarer.

While partner’s choice of a switch was no certainty, it did look that a spade switch was more likely than say a diamond..and East knew that a spade switch looked a good prospect, assuming that West held three or four hearts. Had West held four hearts, the queen would have been falling in two rounds and the defence would have found it easy to take five or six tricks. Yet, where the lead was from a 3-card suit, East must not encourage. The second heart had to be played from East…and, if West had only three hearts, East knew that was the situation. So, whichever of East’s two lower hearts asked for a change of suit should be played at trick 1. A switch at trick 2 to a club would also have defeated the contract though both defenders would have to discard accurately to several rounds of clubs.

Your methods may be different but the end result must be the same. Note that the A was a good initial lead for the defence. While a fourth highest spade is still fine for the defence, East must then find an immediate switch to the J or else, South is likely to make a successful spade guess and the contract then could not be beaten.

So, the right opening lead but the wrong signal given. Would you have done any better?

Jan’s Day in the part-score zone.

 

How many tricks did declarer make after the 9 lead?

Richard Solomon

 

Go Back View All News Items