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What to do with those spades?  For less experienced players and others.

The auction was fraught enough. Now, you need to find 11 tricks, 11 out of the next 12 as you have already lost one. What to do?

 

West leads K with East overtaking to play 2. Over to you.

After your partner’s naturalish 1, everyone seemed to want to speak. West made a weak jump overcall with your partner showing a second suit (hearts). East was there supporting their partner at the 3-level. Although you had a decent suit, your hand did not seem to fit in with your partner’s bidding.

You might not have minded had 4 been passed out but when your partner bid on upwards, you felt, correctly, that your suit had to be the trump suit. At least partner was kind enough to produce a trump and ruffing potential.

Not for long, though, as East overtook their partner’s K lead to play a low trump. You had, as they say, options. If the diamond finesse worked, and you then brought down the K on the next round, you still had to find a dumping place for one of your small spades. If the king did not appear, then you had to dispose of both.

To add to your list of choices was the ruffing club finesse. With the weak-jump overcall on your left, chances were reasonable that East held A. There was also the possibility of a double heart finesse to dispose of one spade, though the odds of that working seemed unlikely.

Again, East was more likely to hold K though if you finessed and this lost, you were down two without even breathing!

At the table, South found an interesting line. No doubt hoping for a singleton K to appear, they played A. At least West followed suit but not with the king. Next came a heart to the ace and then K.

 

East covered and South ruffed before returning to dummy with a heart to the king. This line would succeed when tdiamonds broke 2-2 and the player without K had started with three clubs. It also succeeded on the above lay-out. East was forced to follow to two more clubs and West was forced to discard. Declarer’s second loser was K and the contract had made.

As you can see, on this occasion, any reasonable line would have worked. No declarer likes to take an immediate trump finesse and be defeated. So, with that in mind, South’s line was reasonable, if rather fortunate.

You might argue that East was likely to hold K, when they overtook the K at trick 1. That’s not really true. All at the table knew which suit would be played by the defence at trick 2…and East did the normal and sensible thing of overtaking and playing the trump. Maybe their partner had a trump honour and they did not. They might be simply protecting their partner’s trump honour.

 

 

Thoughtful defenders do

Note that 5 had no chance after the lead of two rounds of spades. North could remove the A, draw trumps and take a successful diamond finesse but there should still be one heart loser as long as West plays an honour when the suit is led from dummy.

Where you have a long strongish suit in a hand with no outside entries, it is much better to make that suit trumps or else as in 5, the suit becomes virtually useless.

 

 

Walk right in?

How hot is the water? You have an opening hand but what bid are you going to make?

2 is either 20-22 balanced or a Weak 2 in a major. You are playing Teams.

 

 

 

 

Richard Solomon

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