Five hands (!) from today’s club dup
More than the normal amount of interesting boards from today’s club duplicate; so, I will just list them each and hope that readers find them interesting.
I led my stiff ♦Q and declarer called for dummy’s ace. A spade was passed to my Q and I shifted to the ♥7. Declarer called for dummy’s queen and the three highest honors were played in sequence on this trick. Declarer now advanced the ♠T. I decided to hop with the ♠A and now faced a decision about how to reach partner for a diamond ruff. Probably the order of his spade plays should indicate whether he owns the ♣K (or ♣A if I did not hold that card myself), but that is a better point to make in the post mortem than to depend upon at the table. I finally decided to play him for the ♥T and returned my ♥4. Voila! Partner won the ♥T and gave me a diamond ruff to hold the opponents to eight tricks.
After you receive a limit raise of 3♥, you carry on to game. How do you play 4♥?
Drawing trumps and stripping the club suit are easy first steps. But next, do you play on diamonds or on spades? I think I would play on diamonds, since if the ♦K is onside, your combined ♠QT9 might complicate the opponents’ ability to cash three spade tricks right away. However, attacking spades has some attraction, too, because perhaps an opponent might, particularly if not careful, be endplayed into either giving a ruff-sluff or leading from the ♦K. One thing, if you do attack spades, the right card to lead is the ♠9 and not ♠T, because you do not want to induce a cover by the ♠J.
As it turns out, no matter what you do, best defense will set you a trick.
Partner’s decision to treat his hand as a three-card limit raise can be questioned, but with an eight-loser hand, is certainly reasonable. How do you play 3♠ on the lead of the ♣6?
At the table, I ducked in dummy and when West played the ♣J, I ducked in my hand, too! Now I was in good shape and ended making ten tricks, losing two spades in addition to the Trick 1 ♣J. Ah, the power of aces and kings!
Would you take the same actions as did I on my hand? Or would you have doubled 4♥ with my partner’s hand, which is what it would have taken on this hand to shut me up?
What is your call on?:
A 3♠ call at this stage should deliver three spades, but with our secondary club fit and such a good doubleton in spades, I chose to bid 3♠ nonetheless.
A lead of two rounds of hearts would scuttle the slam by establishing a slow spade trick for the defense, but at the table a spade was led and we had fourteen tricks on top.
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Bridge-related
On hand 1, “order of playing spades” can show “holding in clubs”. Please explain …
Hi, Lak,
I should have clarified. I was referring to suit preference plays in the trump suit. Partner owned three irrelevant spot cards in spades, the 764. He could play them from the bottom up to show strength in lowest suit of clubs or from the top down to show strength in highest suit of hearts or MUD to show neither.
Another point of the hand that I failed to mention is that had partner returned a club rather than a diamond that I could ruff, we would also have held the hand to eight tricks. That’s the trouble with real hands. Had the deal been a constructed hand, I could exchange the CT and CJ between my hand and declarer’s, and then the diamond return would be the only return that can hold the contract to eight tricks. The same, perfect lie of cards for my side meant that we can make 170 in hearts and so even -110 was very few mps.
— Jeff
More … the suit preference treatment by South should apply only on hands where there appears to be no side suit ruff available; if South is looking for a side suit ruff, then count should prevail over suit preference so that North can, if he gains the lead, know whether South has any trumps remaining with which to score a ruff.
On Board 11, the comment “As it turns out, no matter what you do, best defense will set you a trick.” is an overbid. Let’s assume that declarer follows the strategy I suggested: draw trumps, eliminate clubs, play on diamonds. Specifically, play DA and then a small diamond. If West ducks, then play West to not be the genius who has ducked with the DK. Instead, then choose to play East for the DK and insert the 9 or 8 from dummy. East wins cheaply, but is endplayed.