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Scott "celebrating" another tricky game made!

Seeing “all four hands”.

Today’s deal is about making a difficult 4S contract. It occurred in the recent Havelock North Swiss Pairs and features Scott Smith in partnership with Dennis Apperley. Scott comments that they had known each other for about 40 years though this was their first time as bridge partners… and a very successful day it was as they won the event by about 16 vps.

This deal gives an insight in how a top player goes about planning to make a difficult, perhaps impossible, contract. You can see the two hands and bidding below. What is your plan to come to 10 tricks after losing the first two?

 

 

Scott commented that the bidding could have been better from both sides’ point of view. He and Dennis could have extracted a healthy penalty from 4x, maybe even 3x. However, the play is the thing.

2NT showed both minors, Michael’s style.

West led A and then the top two diamonds, East playing 2 and 9, With Scott ruffing the second round. What’s your plan?

As Scott commented, “you do not play but think.” He did, along these lines:

“What do you know?  It seems very likely that West was 1255 and East therefore 4423.  That A lead and then switch seemed very much like a singleton A.  Sure East might have been 22 in the minors and would bid 3, but it seemed more likely that with 1156 (including at least the A and AKQ), West would have bid more than just 4 even if they did not have the A. 

 But if they did have a 1255, they might still have the A (and 'forget' to double 3 to show a strong hand and instead bid 4). 1255 seemed by far their most likely shape, and my potential losers are 1 in spades (if I  finesse for the jack), no hearts, 1 diamond, and 2/3 in clubs. I  can only afford 1 club loser if I want to make 4.

  If I ruff the club to get rid of one club loser, I may then have two spades to lose.  I could just get lucky in hearts if the Q is with West, or some of the squeeze chances might come home, but I can also give East a chance to go wrong  if I played K now and leave the heart entry there for later. 

 If West holds A they cannot do the needed (play a spade) and if East wins A playing a spade is not that clear to them as they know they are giving me a free finesse to pick up their J (playing a spade is best, but not easy, and even if they do, I would still have all the same small chances like the hearts behaving or East having all of the AT9 tripleton and being squeezed in clubs and hearts).  This all took a while to figure out - so my “tank” after trick three was lengthy.”

It was time to play to trick 4. These were the four hands:

 

Scott played K , won by East’s ace, with East returning a club won by Q in Scott’s hand. Defensive slip obtained! Next came K and a heart to the ace. West had to be 1255 shape. Scott played J. If East does not cover, Scott could have discarded a club, ruffed a heart, bringing down Q and then ruffed his remaining club, since East had to have started with 3 clubs and had been unable to discard any.

However, East played Q over J. So, Scott ruffed and ruffed a club and now discarded his remaining small club on the established 10, with East having to follow suit.

In the 3 card ending, Scott was in dummy with 3 red cards. East had J86 and Scott KQT. The last three tricks belonged to Scott and 4 had been made.

Scott commented: “It was one of those hands where early on you think you can 'see' all four hands, but it still took a bit of imagination to see their chance to go wrong and how to exploit it.” A second round of trumps from East may have cost East their trump trick but would have left Scott with a second club loser. Not, though, on this day.

Richard Solomon

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