Defending can be tough at the best of times, but trusting your Partner is a
crucial part of successful defence and you make life
much harder for you and Partner if you don't. Counting the hand as best you can is also a critical facet of defence.
This was an interesting hand I played with Brian this morning.
Opps have bid to 2
via the following auction (You are South):
West North East South No No
1
No 1NT 2
2
All Pass
Partner leads the 8
and you can see
East A
Q10
10543
Q109532
South Q97
K43
AJ9762
4
You rise with the Ace of Diamonds and Declarer contributes the Queen. How do you plan the defence?
.
.
.
Clearly Partner started with a singleton Diamond, so there's a Diamond ruff available. Your Queen of Spades will also be a trick. A Club lead from you at trick 2 is potentially attractive: You might be able to engineer a Club ruff, but the likelyhood is that you would be ruffing with your
natural trump trick, so a Club ruff is only good if you can get
two Club ruffs (ie: you're looking for Partner to have something like
Axx. Kxx in Partner's hand doesn't work as well, because Partner will only be able to give you 1 Club ruff after taking their King of Clubs unless Declarer ducks from Axx).
Another problem with that idea is that that would mean Partner probably has at least 6-card Hearts and since clearly there are a fair number of points "missing" on this auction, the likelyhood is that you and Partner have missed a decent Heart contract (If Declarer has 6+ Spades, 2 Diamonds and 3 Clubs, they can only have 2 Hearts at most). It's perhaps unlikely that Partner would stay silent over 1
with a 6-card Heart suit and a fair number of points (as it turns out Partner has the best hand at the table)
Similarly, going for Diamond ruffs in
Partner's hand is also attractive, because a third Diamond through Declarer's hand might
promote a trump in Partner's hand, and you can always
suggest a Club back by leading the 2
at trick 2.
Be that as it may, you decide to go for the 2 Club ruffs in your hand and lead your singleton Club at trick 2. Declarer plays the Jack and Partner wins the King. After a little thought, Partner continues with the 5
and your King wins the trick.
What is going on? This is one of the places where "trusting your partner" comes into play. You
know Partner can see the 2 and 3 of Clubs in Dummy and you led the 4, so your Club lead was a singleton or from Hxx(x). Clearly Partner has
underled his Ace of Hearts (Dummy played the 10 on the previous trick so there's no way Declarer has ducked holding the Ace). It's obvious, therefore, that (1) Partner is desperate for their Diamond ruff and (2) they have determined that giving you a Club ruff is not possible. How can that be? The only explanation is that
they have all of the Clubs and know that Declarer's Jack of Clubs was a singleton. You give partner their Diamond ruff. They cash the Ace of Hearts and exit with a Spade to Declarer's Ace. The 3
is now led from Dummy. What do you do?
You and Partner have already taken 5 tricks. At this stage you
have to trust that Partner has not given you a Club ruff for a reason and that reason can only be that they started with something like
xxx,
Axxx,
x,
AKxxx. That would give Declarer
KJ10xxx,
Jxxx,
KQ,
J, a thin Opener, to be sure, but the play is totally consistent with that. All you have to do is to play a Diamond here, Declarer is forced to ruff and you can sit back a wait for your Spade trick.
At the table, Brian decided to go for his Club ruff and ruffed in with the 9. Declarer overruffed, cashed the King of Spades, dropping your Queen and Partner's Jack simultaneously and was only -1 because they had to give a trick up to Partner's 9
at the end. If you had given Partner their
ruff at trick 2, however, the defence can take 8 tricks in all (A
,
ruff, A
, K
,
ruff,
to Dummy's Ace, and you still have a top Club, the Queen of Spades and 9
to come), which would have been +1½ IMPs rather than -1 IMP.
(To be fair to Brian, it was 4:30am his time so he was running on vapour and with distractions at home, so I am
not being critical of him here. I couldn't perform
at all at 4:30am!!
). As I said at the top, defence is difficult at the best of times, but hopefully the above will show how you need to trust that Partner sometimes "knows" better than you do (not because they're a better player, but because they might have a better view of the critical aspects of the hand) and is worthy of your trust until proved otherwise. Also you need to try to reconcile your "image" of the hand with what you already know from the bidding and, as here, with the
implications of any possible image. If, for example, North had started with
Axx here, then they
must have 6+ Hearts (if Declarer has 6+ Spades) and it's
very unlikely that they would stay silent over 1
, so
that possible image of the hand has to be discarded when your defensive plan for the hand is made. If Partner has 4-card Clubs, then you are only ever getting
one Club ruff and that's no good to you, since you've an inevitable trump trick anyway, so it's simply not worth playing for
any Club ruffs.
