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A “Helping” hand

Your partner is there to help your side. Believe it! It’s true. Just because they do not always lead the suit you bid (they had their reasons, maybe valid ones!) or return your suit to give you a ruff (check out their reasons again!), the basic premise is correct.

Yet, there are times when no matter how helpful they are trying to be, they are just not correct. Try Board 26 from this week’s play.

I suspect some South players opened 1 with

A7654

 Q92

-

AKJ74

and after an opposition double may have got a raise to 2from their partner. A couple of South’s came very unstuck when they raised the stakes to the three and four levels. They ended down in a very big heap when they were both doubled and found that -1400 was not a good save either against an opposition’s making game or especially a non-making one! When you see that North hand, it looks decidedly unattractive for a raise when your side is vulnerable.

Yet, despite the well-known pre-emptive value of getting the spades in early, I would not have ignored that lovely club suit and would have started there. However, our opponents did start with 1 which was not raised but still got into trouble. This was the auction with East being a somewhat unwilling declarer in 5:

West         North       East           South

                                                      1

x                 Pass           2          3

3             x                 4          Pass

5             All Pass

5 was a “one for the road”. Partner will have something useful like the K or a club shortage. This is what South saw after leading a high club.

 

A fair dummy..but your job is to beat the contract. Let’s say that at trick one, your partner played 8 and declarer 9. You are playing reverse signals. What do you do at trick two?

South continued with the A and then the K…and the roof fell in!

 

 

Declarer ruffed, drew trumps, ruffed the remaining club loser in their hand and discarded dummy’s heart loser on the K, making 11 tricks. At the table, there was some debate as to which club North should have played at trick 1 but, despite North’s double of 3, was there any rush for South to play any further high black cards after the first high club?

The only reason to cash the A would be if dummy’s spade could be discarded on a fourth round of hearts. East’s very weak bidding indicated that they did not hold four hearts (surely hearts would have bid over the double or over 3?) and if they did not, then there was little danger in South switching to that suit. The worse that could happen was that East held Jx or Jxx. It would be a sad day when a club were to be discarded on the K. Indeed, if North’s club card was correct count, then they had one or three. Thus, if East had more than one club, they had an original three! There would still be a second club loser.

Hold fire with that other high club just in case East’s 9 was a true card.

South’s best exit at trick two was a trump but given the difficulty in finding one, a low heart might have been less of a risk than playing two more high black cards.  

Partner’s double had indicated something in spades but their failure to raise to 2 indicates it probably was not that much. Had South cashed the A and switched to the heart, declarer wins, draws trumps and can set up the 9 to discard one club while ruffing the other two in hand. K takes care of the heart loser.

It was very tempting for North to suggest that a spade was the best lead if defending 3NT. As you can see, it was not! “Only a suggestion” North might say. “I was just trying to be helpful”. South could only agree through gritted teeth !

Richard Solomon

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