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“Off” to a good start.

Often, the defence will prevail if the opening leader does the right thing at trick one. Will today’s defence prevail and will West find a good lead to indeed see that the contract goes “off”?

A slow-to-start bidding sequence accelerated and has left you on lead to 4. You have either the best or second-best hand at the table. What’s your choice?

 

 

Well, it looked low-level when neither North nor East could muster a bid over 1. However, they both came to life after we showed we had a strong overcall by doubling 2. 1 could have been short but evidently was not. Some latterly given black suit support for the two strong hands at the table ended with South seeking to make 10 tricks.

So, what’s it to be? There were two right suits to lead and two wrong ones. Our West reasoned that our partner was by no means certain to hold the K, with South favourite to hold that card. So, they opted for passive defence by leading a trump…and eventually that would prove to be one of the successful leads.

Let’s see all four hands and how the play went:

 

 

Declarer won the opening trump lead, drew trump and then played A and a second heart, East showing an odd number of hearts. So, West won the trick and played their other high heart.

South ruffed with 7, carefully preserving 2 in case an entry was needed to dummy (it would be) and played a diamond towards dummy, with K scoring. A second diamond went to West’s Q. Again, West played a second high card in the suit just led by the declarer, A.

Once more, South ruffed high, 8. Someone now had to play the spade suit..and it was not to be the defence. 2 went to 5 in dummy with West discarding a spade and East a heart. Whichever spade was led from dummy (8 was chosen) was covered by East with South having to lose two spade tricks along with one trick in each red suit to be down one.

As you can see above, A would also have been a successful though riskier lead for the defence though declarer would have succeeded had either major suit been led at trick 1. Sometimes, you can/need to take quick tricks to defeat a contract. Other deals require patience and giving nothing away to the declarer. When declarer is strong and dummy very weak, as in this case, such a patient passive defence is often best.

South did miss one chance in being a hero, for their side. The winning action over East’s 3 would have been to call 3NT. With 8 top tricks and a 9^th if a spade was led, they could have tried 3NT, hoping their partner could provide a little something in both red suits. North did indeed help out admirably in both suits.

 

                       Any fishhooks?

It seems pretty straightforward. 1 promised 5 hearts and 2 guaranteed at least 6. So, what now? You are playing Match-Point Pairs.

 

Richard Solomon

 

 

 

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