Board 5
Our side vulnerable
Our side vulnerable
| ♠ K Q ♥ K 10 8 5 2 ♦ J 7 ♣ A 10 9 4 |
Two passes to me. I open one heart, LHO bids one spade, and partner doubles. Some claim this double promises at least four-four in the minors. I don't think that's quite true. First of all, you might have a three-card limit raise in hearts. In addition, there are some awkward hands with a three-card minor where a negative double is the only call that makes sense. Take
| ♠ x x x x ♥ Q x ♦ A x x x ♣ K x x |
for example. You could pass with this pattern if your hand were weaker. But this hand is too good to pass. What else can you do but double? If partner bids two clubs, you can continue with two hearts. Since you would bid three hearts with a three-card limit raise, this bid should show precisely a doubleton heart. I would consider this hand is a minimum for the sequence. You might have as much a two notrump rebid without a spade stopper.
RHO redoubles, showing the ace or king of spades. I bid two clubs. LHO and partner pass. RHO balances with two spades. I pass, LHO passes, and partner competes with three clubs. Everyone passes. LHO leads the jack of spades.
| NORTH
Jack ♠ 9 7 6 5 ♥ 4 ♦ A 5 4 3 ♣ K J 7 5 |
||
| SOUTH
Phillip ♠ K Q ♥ K 10 8 5 2 ♦ J 7 ♣ A 10 9 4 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Nathanial | Jack | Marcus | Phillip |
| Pass | Pass | 1 ♥ | |
| 1 ♠ | Double1 | Redouble2 | 2 ♣ |
| Pass | Pass | 2 ♠ | Pass |
| Pass | 3 ♣ | (All pass) | |
| 1Negative double | |||
| 2Spade ace or spade king | |||
Partner's three club bid makes no sense. We don't necessarily need nine trumps to compete at three level when the opponents are at the two level. But, with four spades and a singleton in my primary suit, partner's hand is better for defense and worse for offense than is his typical hand on this auction.
RHO plays the ace, and I drop the queen, the card I'm known to hold. He continues with the four of spades to my king; West plays the deuce.
If I can score seven trump tricks on a crossruff, I'll make this. I need to start by ducking a heart. Clearly I would rather lose the heart trick on my left, so that the presumed trump shift rides around to my hand. I can then ruff a heart, ruff a spade, ruff a heart, ruff a spade, and ruff a heart with the club king. That's seven tricks. I need two more, and I still have the diamond ace and a high trump in my hand.
I may be able to increase my chance of ducking the heart to West if I play a diamond to the ace and a heart toward my hand. But releasing the diamond ace is a bad idea. I establish a winner for the opponents, I give the opponents communication, and I expose myself to a possible overruff. If I took the time, I'm sure I could find a specific layout where playing a diamond to the ace costs the contract, but I'm not going to bother. I'm rejecting it because it's bad strategy (sort of like putting your knight on the edge of the board).
West surely has the heart ace on the auction. Should I exit with the heart king? If I were sure West would play a trump, that would make sense. But what if he doesn't? Often the most effective way to scuttle a crossruff is to avoid leading trumps in order to retain the defense's middle cards. That may be the case here. If West wins the heart ace and plays a diamond, I have no clear route to seven trump tricks. Accordingly, I'd just as soon preserve the option of ruffing out ace third of hearts on my left. Besides, leading the heart ten may suffice to keep East off play. It may be hard for West to duck with ace-queen or even ace-jack.
I lead the heart ten. West plays the three, and East wins with the jack. Probably East has the queen also. I do wish I had the benefit of some table action. In real life, even one as table-presence-challenged as I am would have some clue as to whether that was the case or not. East shifts to the deuce of clubs. I play the ten. If this holds, I can crossruff as described above. If West covers, I will be in dummy, where I don't really want to be. But at least I will have flushed out the club queen, which may make things easier.
West does cover with the queen, and I win with dummy's king. This is the position I've reached, with the lead in dummy:
| NORTH
Jack ♠ 9 7 ♥ -- ♦ A 5 4 3 ♣ J 7 5 |
||
| SOUTH
Phillip ♠ -- ♥ K 8 5 2 ♦ J 7 ♣ A 9 4 |
I don't usually present Gargoyle Chronicles hands as quizzes. But this is a good problem. If I didn't offer you a chance to test yourself, you would be annoyed with me. Under the assumption that West began with ace third of hearts, how do you play to take seven more tricks?
------
I don't know if this problem is actually difficult or if I just had a blind spot. But it took me longer than I care to admit to find the answer. Finally, it dawned on me that I didn't need to ruff two hearts in dummy. I can afford to lose two more tricks. So now that I've found the trump queen, I can afford to lose a heart trick. Why waste one of dummy's trumps ruffing with it when I desperately need it as an entry to my hand? The solution is to ruff a spade to my hand, then lead a low heart pitching dummy's last spade. If the defense plays another trump, I win in my hand, ruff a heart, hopefully dropping West's ace and establishing my suit. I can then return to my hand with dummy's carefully preserved trump. A red-suit switch by the defense does no better. And a spade switch allows me to ruff in dummy and pitch my diamond loser. See? I knew there was a reason not to release the diamond ace.
I play a spade from dummy. East pitches the nine of hearts. Oops. Time to reassess. That looks like queen-jack-nine of hearts, which gives West ace fourth. Actually that makes more sense than ace third on the auction. Holding four hearts would make West's light overcall more attractive. He probably would have led a singleton diamond (or East might have bid diamonds with six of them). So West is probably 5-4-2-2 or 5-4-3-1. The latter pattern I think I can safely ignore. I doubt I can make this against a bad trump break.
The ace isn't going to ruff out. But that's OK. I just need to make a slight adjustment to my plan. Instead of leading a low heart at this point, I need to lead the king, smothering East's queen and establishing my eight. If East did start with four hearts and has falsecarded with the nine, hearts are now two-two. So leading the king doesn't hurt anything.
I ruff the spade and lead the heart king. West plays the ace, I pitch dummy's last spade as planned, and East plays the heart queen. We have now reached this position, slightly different from the one I was envisioning, with West on play. (I'm just guessing about the diamond honors. They don't really matter.)
| NORTH
Jack ♠ -- ♥ -- ♦ A 5 4 3 ♣ J 7 5 | ||
| WEST
Nathanial ♠ 10 x ♥ 7 6 ♦ K x ♣ x |
EAST
Marcus ♠ -- ♥ -- ♦ Q x x x x ♣ x x | |
| SOUTH
Phillip ♠ -- ♥ 8 5 2 ♦ J 7 ♣ A 9 |
| NORTH
Jack ♠ 9 7 6 5 ♥ 4 ♦ A 5 4 3 ♣ K J 7 5 |
||
| WEST
Nathanial ♠ J 10 8 3 2 ♥ A 7 6 3 ♦ K 8 ♣ Q 8 |
EAST
Marcus ♠ A 4 ♥ Q J 9 ♦ Q 10 9 6 2 ♣ 6 3 2 | |
| SOUTH
Phillip ♠ K Q ♥ K 10 8 5 2 ♦ J 7 ♣ A 10 9 4 |
The crossruff works only because West has the club eight. If East had it, refusing to overruff dummy's club five would beat me. What an unusual position! You must refuse to overruff the five, allowing declarer his ruff-sluff, so that you can overruff the seven later. Thanks for overbidding, partner. I had much more fun playing this hand than I would have had collecting an easy down two against two spades.
East did make a serious error in pitching the nine of hearts. It cost nothing double dummy, since I could always make the hand by leading the heart king. But I wasn't intending to do that until he clued me in about the lie of the heart suit.
I don't know how the play went at the other table, but somehow my counterpart managed an overtrick in the same contract, cutting our lead in half.
Table 1: +110
Table 2: -130
Result on Board 5: -1 imp
Total: +1 imp
Post script:
Rainer Herrmann points out, "The plan in the quiz scenario should certainly be to ruff only one heart. But what do you actually accomplish by the artistry of ruffing a spade and ducking a heart first? Simply come to the club nine, ruff a heart and play dummy's last club to the trump ace. Now decide which heart honor is more likely to drop, having seen the heart nine from West, which could be a false card to give declarer a losing option."
He is correct. Not only does his solution allow you to delay your decision about the lie of the heart suit, it avoids the crossruff variation, which fails on best defense if East has the club eight. So why didn't I see that? I suppose it took me so long to think of not ruffing two hearts that I wore myself out, and I gave insufficient thought to the best way to reach my hand. My instinct said to ruff a spade to force East to discard, and I didn't stop to question my instinct.
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