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Rat Catching?

A fairly normal sounding auction left you on lead when the end contract was just a little surprising. What then would you lead?

 

After West’s 3 bid, it seemed that the final contract was destined to be some number of hearts but East offered 3NT and West seemed happy to play there as well. So, what is your lead? Are you going for the “post-mortem safe” lead of partner’s suit or do you look elsewhere?

You are playing Match-Point Swiss Pairs where overtricks do count.

It seemed to South that to offer 3NT here East had more than a flimsy hold in spades. They were more likely to have say AQx or the equivalent and were quite ready for a spade lead. So, South made East wait for the lead of that suit. They tried their own unmentioned suit, a low club. The result was quite unexpected:

 

It took an unusually long length of time for North-South to unravel the straightforward exercise of taking 5 club tricks and then  for South and East to be somewhat surprised at the length of dummy’s spades. The club lead was necessary for North-South or else declarer would have run off 12 quick tricks in the other three suits and record a very poor score for North-South as few pairs bid and made a spade or diamond slam.

This board demonstrated a somewhat rare example these days of a psychic bid, this time an overcall, and to add to the danger, at adverse vulnerability. Psyches seemed to be more common in the past and often evoked frustration (or even worse) from their opponents who felt such a bid was against the rules or even the spirit of the game.

Of course, neither is true as a psyche is perfectly legal. Psyches should be infrequent and, of course, must be totally unknown and unexpected to the partner of the player who makes such a bid.

Here, South would have no reason to disturb 2 if it was doubled for penalties. That would have been the last thing on West’s mind after their partner’s negative double. Should East have doubled 1? Normally, such a double shows 4 cards in the other major. Yet, East had an opening hand, a diamond fit and a big weakness in clubs. They could not have been sure of the right game, or even possibly slam.

They could have bid a forcing 2 which should agree diamonds. Unless they reached slam, they would probably have recorded a poor score.

Over 2, West seems to have been strong enough to jump to 4 which plays as well as the other major. 3 left open East’s decision to try 3NT. Surely, East reasoned, their partner will have some cards in the unbid club suit. 3NT seemed a reasonable shot, therefore.

Apart from a spade lead to 3NT, West had one last chance to save the day. They alone knew that the number of spades in this pack seemed to be far in excess of 13. Could they “smell a rat?” Unfortunately, their own hearts were poor, rather excluding making that suit trumps. Could they therefore bid 4 and expose the psyche? Had they done so, we might still be waiting to East's reaction and interpretation to that bid. 

There are those around who overcall on 4 card suits, which could just make the actual bidding authentic. Thus, to their cost, West sat it out.

Not all psyches are this successful. Maybe we do not hear of those which record spectacular bottom results for the psyching side. Nevertheless, keep the psyche in your back pocket for a special unexpected occasion. It is just another interesting part of our ever challenging game.

Richard Solomon

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