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A Thin Fine Line…

…between success and failure. A good example of this occurred in the following board from the final of the Mixed Trial.

Maybe you should: maybe not. Yet, with your opponents conducting a short relay auction, you decide to try to help your partner with their lead…and perhaps kind of wish you had not because rather strangely, you found yourself on lead, all too quickly, and with the stakes unusually high!

 

1C was 18+ hcp Precision style with 3 showing a spade shortage, 7-8hcp, 5+ diamonds and 4 clubs. 3 asked more and 3 showed a 1354 shape hand. Maybe you should have had one more spade as insurance as to what actually happened but you did, after all, double a known shortage in that East hand.

West could have passed 3 x to continue the relay. However, the redouble was to play and left you on lead. What would be your choice?

No doubt, with their ace-less 8 count and a mere singleton trump, East would have awaited dummy with some interest. A minute or three earlier, they had not expected to be declarer in such a contract.

So, have you made up your mind? Your decision would either gain you 5 imps or lose you 13. South decided to go passive and led 9. Hoping for 3 spade tricks (thanks to just the one trump in the East hand) and holding A, South had to hope their partner would provide a trick from somewhere. They did, but not after a diamond lead:

 

Until the double of 3, West was wondering whether they should choose game in spades, or no trumps, or even diamonds. The double gave them a fourth option.

It was relatively plain sailing for East. They won to cash three rounds of clubs, discarding one of West’s hearts before playing their trump. South, accurately, inserted 10, thus ensuring three trump tricks but there was now to be no 5^th trick for the defence. East would have been very relieved that North followed to 2 rounds of spades. That was a score of 760 for East-West.

Meanwhile, at the other table, West started with an Acol 2. East “waited” with 2. Then spades, twice, and diamonds were bid naturally before East became the declarer in 3NT. South led 6. A took the first trick with West’s high diamonds next and then J overtaken to be followed by two more diamonds.

North’s first discard was a “low like” 2. South discarded three spades on the diamonds while North’s other discard was a club. East had 7 tricks with Q still to come. Declarer exited their spade to South’s ace and South played 7 to North’s K. Back came 4 and the second big decision of this board. Had declarer inserted 10, they would have scored +400 and reduced the loss to 9 imps. As it was, they played North for both high hearts, putting in Q. They soon lost three more heart tricks to be down 1, an actual loss of 13 imps.

Had 3xx been defeated and a successful heart guess been made at the other table, the gain would have been 12 imps, a swing of 25 imps on those two key decisions.

There is no right way of defending such a redoubled contract though taking what tricks you can see is not a bad philosophy. This time, the initial A lead would have gained North-South 6 imps in 3xx. It is not often we see redoubled contracts, especially making ones. One needs to be pretty confident of one’s doubles in such a relay auction as occurred above.

Richard Solomon

 

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