Hi All,
This was an interesting play problem from a hand I played with Nuri yesterday.
North 
A108
A1094
AK54
92
South -
J8753
62
KQJ1083
EW Game, Dealer EastBiddingEast South West North2
No No X
No 3
(Xf) No No (!!!!)
3
4
No 4
No 4
No 5
(!!!!)
X 5
All Pass
We'll draw a slight veil over the bidding. Nuri forgot we played Transfer Leb over our doubles of their Weak 2's. The fact that East was under-valuing his 12-count with 7-card Spades, but then enthusiastically competing later on saved us from playing the hand in 3
. Anyway, you're in 5
and West leads the Jack of Spades. How do you plan the play?
.
.
.
From the bidding it sounds like East has 10 or 11 cards between Diamonds and Spades (because they doubled 5
, but
didn't double 5
). That means a bad Heart split is almost a racing certainty. The only good news is that the Hearts are going to be on your left. You have 2 inescapable losers in the Ace of Clubs and 1 Heart, so there's no margin for error. Might East be 6-5 in the sharp suits? Possibly, so early ruffs of Diamonds in your hand should
not be in your game plan.
Even though you're anticipating a bad Heart split, it's more flexible to leave the Ace of Spades in Dummy and ruff the first trick in hand, so you can attack the Hearts. You run the Jack of Hearts which holds the trick, East discarding a small Spade - no big surprise there. What now?
Clearly you need to develop the Clubs, because with the bad Heart split, you're not going to get many ruffs in, so at trick 3 lead the King of Clubs, which holds. Change of plan? No! The Queen of Clubs is taken by East's Ace (West playing the 6 and 7). East now leads the Queen of Spades. Ruff or take the Ace?
Still better to ruff in your hand and continue with the Clubs. West follows to the 3rd Club and one of Dummy's losing Diamonds goes away. The 4th Club finishes West off. By now it's looking like East started with
KQxxxxx,
-,
QJxx
Ax, or
KQxxxx,
-,
QJxxx
Ax. On the 4th Club, if West discards, the last losing Diamond goes away; if they ruff, you overruff and play Ace King and a 3rd Diamond, ruffing with the
8, and either way you're only conceding the Ace of Cubs and one Heart trick. This works even if the Diamonds are 5-2.
5
making was only moderately good, because some insane EW Pairs competed in Spades at the 5 or 6 level, which is insane at this vulnerability, and so there were a few -800's floating about. Only one other pair were allowed to play in Hearts (at the 4-level) and somehow managed to make only 9 tricks.
(1) Assess the hand
(2) Count your tricks and losers
(3) Make a plan that is
realistically based on the bidding and what you can see
(4) Continually re-assess the hand and if necessary tweak your plan.
On this hand the key plays were to ruff Spades in hand rather than taking the Ace in Dummy, because you need to be in
hand rather than in Dummy, having the determination to finesse the Hearts rather than p[laying for them to be 2-2 or with a singleton honour somewhere, and getting the Clubs developed as soon as the Heart position is known. The bidding made it incredibly unlikely that East had started with 4 Clubs, so pushing Clubs is totally safe once we know East cannot ruff Clubs.
