Played a hand with Eszter last night where neither of us shone:
Opps bid to 4
via 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
. Your Partner leads a trump and Dummy goes down with
6
led.
KQ4
A653
J10964
10
You hold:
973
K9874
3
AJ32
Declarer draws trumps in 3 roundsending in Dummy, Partner showing out on the 3rd round and signalling for a Diamond. Declarer leads 10
from Dummy. What's your plan?
I erred in two ways here.
Firstly, I rose with the Ace of Clubs (which almost certainly sets up two Club tricks for Declarer). Better to duck, hope that Declarer rises with a top honour and now that's their last Club trick.
Secondly I woodenly complied with Partner's request for a Diamond and led my 3
. A decent amount of thought would have made me switch to the King of Hearts instead: Clearly Partner does
not have a singleton Heart, or they'd probably have led it initially. Regardless of the Heart position, it's
critical to get the Ace of Hearts off Dummy, to kill the entry to any possibly Diamond tricks.
In practice, Eszter held
62
Q2
AK872
9764
Eszter won my Diamond switch with the K
. Even at this point, she should have seen the danger the Diamonds in Dummy posed and should have switched to the Q
in an attempt to drive out Dummy's Ace, but she took her second Diamond trick and that was the end of the defence.
Assessing what the dangers are on a given hand is
critical to good defence (and Declarer play, for that matter). Here, Dummy had no trumps left. Even if I rose immediately with the Ace of Clubs, it should
only have been with the intent of leading the King of Hearts to kill dummy stone dead. Note that leading a smaller Heart isn't necessarily good enough. It
has to be the King.