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Interesting Hands
By Steve MoeseRecent tournaments brought interesting hands. The new version of ACBL LIVE makes post mortems even better. This record of tournament play not only lets you research your own results, but you can look up friends and see how they fared on the same hands. Here are two interesting hands from major local Pairs contests that are prime examples of the fun we can have.
Let’s start with Board 6 from the 1st session of the Flight B NAP. You sit South with me.
You might be concerned about the opening 1♠ bid but we play precision, (11-15 HCP). Partner’s 2♦ is GF. Our natural auction carries no information from the opponents but tells them a lot about our hands. You survey the NS assets and see 5 Top Tricks, 1 or 2 losers in ♠ and ♥, a possible loser in ♦, and 3+ losers possible in ♣. Whenever losers exceed winners by a large margin, we play safely.
First job is what to do about ♣. On the ♣Q, dummy plays the ♣ 2 ND East the ♣5. (You ask and learn they play standard or “right-side-up” signals so East has an ODD number of ♣’s. Holding 5 ♣ cards we can gain some extra protection by ducking. The ♣J takes dummy’s 9 and East’s 7. We duck one more time. Now the opponents cannot use ♣ to communicate if they break 5-3. Sure enough West plays the 3rd ♣. Can we make West pay for that choice?
While we do have 2 entries to dummy, the ♦ finesse is a stronger play than cashing the top 2 ♦ (in this case both plays work – bridge can be funny that way – rewarding bad plays). How do we find the extra trick? Let’s play on ♦ and see what we learn. ♦8 to the ♦J draws the ♦4 from West and the ♦2 from East (an odd number). We can trust East’s count signal and not Wests. When the ♦A draws West’s ♦Q, we learn that West started with 2♦ and at least 3♣, leaving room for no more than 8 cards in the majors. We will run the ♦ pitching all our ♥ Cards! This leaves with West to make a discard. Notice that declarer simply has to watch ♥ to see if the ♥A shows up at trick 10. If not, then the ♠ are good – this is often called a “show-up” squeeze. West was left wishing they had cashed the ♥A before leading the 3rd♣. 3N +5 was an 86% board.
While on the topic of squeezes, not all are “true”, meaning if the opponents could see all the cards then there is a discard approach that voids the threat. Here is an example from the Open Pairs in the Spooktacular Sectional Tournament.
Now, sit West with me. We have an uneventful auction to 3N, West denying any 4 card major. Opening Lead: ♣J
We count 6 winners hand have to develop 3 more. We have 1 loser in ♦ and a slow loser in ♠. ♥s look problematic, missing AQ10 (6 times) in the suit is not good. At least we know North doesn’t have 4 or more ♥ (given the C lead). We’ll win the ♣Q to suggest we don’t have the K, and play on ♦.
To avoid having to guess the ♦ 9, we’ll lead low toward the ♦J 1st. This wins and now we can lead the ♦10 using the ♣A as our Dummy entry.
We collect 6 tricks in short order.
A small ♥ to the ♥8 draws the ♥A from North, Dummy and South following low.
North continues with the ♣10 (an error – can you see why?), we choose to pitch a ♠ from dummy. North squeezed South in the majors by failing to switch to a ♠! Now we get an extra overtrick. If South discards the ♥7, we finesse losing to the ♥Q but take the 4 remaining tricks. If South instead discards a ♠, we cash 3♠ tricks and one ♥, losing 1 ♥ trick at the end. Making 5 was worth 94%.
End positions can be tricky, especially for defense. If we stay alert to the possibilities as declarer, they will show up. Since good players play logically, there are many inferences that can guide declarer along the way. Are you paying attention?
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