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Thinking Ahead.

It’s what we should do if possible whether declarer or a defender and in the bidding too. So, what thoughts are going through your mind with the following East hand when your partner leads A:

 

Pairs is the game though that really is more relevant to North in their decision to raise to 2NT. What is passing through your mind as East? 1NT shows 6-9 hcp. 

Firstly, you must be thinking that your partner has made a good lead. South will have no more than 3 spades and so assuming West has K, there are 4 maybe even 5 spade tricks to be taken. 4 seems more likely and “thinking ahead”, you might wonder what is going to happen after the first four tricks?

In short, if you win the fourth round, and partner cannot signal because they have four spades too, what do you play next? You will have only declarer’s discards to help you and they may be of little help!

Firstly, though, you must encourage your partner to continue spades. “Low encourage”. So, you play 2. Next comes K and, thinking ahead, you play 9. A third spade sees South discard a diamond. Great. You can get off lead by playing a fourth spade, with South discarding a second low diamond from hand and a small heart from dummy.

West switches to 4 won by dummy’s ace. They follow suit with 10. Next comes dummy’s three clubs, the third round overtaken with South’s Q. South has two more clubs to cash. You discard a low heart (low like) and a second low diamond. Meanwhile your partner discards 6 and 4 in that order. Dummy’s second diamond is discarded… and you?

Are you “thinking ahead”? Hope so if you want to beat this part-score.

With you to discard to the last club, this is what you see:

 

Here’s hoping you threw your K. These were the four hands:

 

There was plenty of evidence for you to throw away your honour. While we knew from the bidding that South was minimum for their 1NT response, they had so far only shown up with J and Q. They had to have more and partner’s discouraging heart discard (10 would have been clearer if playing reverse signals…low like) placed the Q with South.

It would seem J made up to 6 points for the 1NT bid. So, you would hate to win K and be forced to lead a heart at trick 12. 4 from partner on the first round of the suit gave evidence that they held Q rather than J. If South had both red queens, you are without redress assuming if you discard 8 that South exits their remaining diamond, Q.

So, “thinking ahead” was evident not just early on (had you exited a diamond after winning the fourth round of spades, that diamond would have to be K…not so easy.) but later on in discarding. The successful defence would be made easier with a good heart discard from West and because counting missing hcp was easish because South had so few. However, anticipating what might happen was purely in your court.

can pay especially at Pairs

And back to North. With 16 and no spade hold (and knowing their partner had less than 4 spades), they might have passed out 1NT enabling their partner to play for an overtrick rather than for their contract, which resulted in a minus score.

 

Richard Solomon

 

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