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.

Another hand from the session I played with Eszter earlier this evening. I normally pick up balanced 6 counts, but the dealer was really smiling on Eszter and me tonight. We picked up 4½ 1 openers in the space of 7 Boards!!!

Game All, Dealer South. You pick up

  AQJ1082
  Q62
  KQ
  AJ

With silent Opps, the bidding proceeds:
1 - 1
1 - 2
??

Do you (1) Pass? (2) Blast 4 ?  (3) Make a trial bid in Hearts?
(1) is dangerous in that it potentially allows Opps a relatively low-level entrée into the bidding
(2) is punishing Partner for keeping the bidding open. Yes, they might have a singleton Heart and Kxx and you will cruise home in 4 , but it's against the odds, especially with silent Opps
(3) is the best of both worlds, I feel, and was the route I chose.

Eszter declined my invitation and bid 3 and we played there. West led the Ace of Diamonds and Eszter put down

North
  6543
  1097
  54
  KQ74

South
  AQJ1082
  Q62
  KQ
  AJ

Everyone follows to the first trick and West continues with the 8 , taken by your King.

How do you plan the play?

If you're in game, you have no real option. You have to play for the Clubs to be 4-3, take 3 quick rounds of Clubs, discarding a Heart and then hope that the Spade finesse is working.

At IMPs, however, when you are only in 3 , you have to reckon that it is highly likely that the vast majority of the other tables will be in 4 (1 - 2 - 4 ), so you have to find the safest way to try to make your 9 tricks on the assumption that the line for 10 tricks is not going to work. That suggests a very different line of play:

I cashed the Ace of Spades (everyone followed low) and now played 3 rounds of Clubs. East showed out on the second Club, but was unable to ruff because it was his Partner West who still had the King. My 9 tricks were secure and my 10th appeared as if by magic when West weirdly gave me a ruff 'n' sluff in Clubs rather than opening up the Hearts after I'd ruffed Eszter's 4th Club and put him in with the Q .

My line guarantees 9 tricks if either

(a) the K   is singleton, or
(b) The K isn't singleton but the Clubs are not worse than 5-2 and the Spades 2-1, or
(c) The Clubs are 6-1 or 7-0, but the player with short Clubs only has 1 Spade.

Playing to take the Spade finesse only works when the Clubs are 4-3, which is far less good odds.

So far as the bidding is concerned, the moral of this tale is not to punish partner. South might have a 19-count but it's really not a very nice 19-count. It's worth an invitation to 4 but no more than that. And yes, the majority of pairs were in 4 going 1 or 2 off. Only 1 Pair bid and made it when West led Ace and another Diamonds. Declarer led Ace and Queen of Spades and West continued with a 3rd Diamond when in with the King of Spades, despite a signal for Hearts from his Partner on the second Spade. 3 +1 was worth 4½ IMPs

Really enjoyed this hand today: You hold:

  752
  52
  9854
  KJ86

Partner opens 1 and the bidding proceeds:

North     East     South     West
1           X          No            No
1           2       No            No
2           No        2NT          No
3           No        3NT          All Pass

West leads the 10 and Partner goes down with
North
  AKQ3
  KQ973
  QJ7
  4

South
  752
  52
  9854
  KJ86

East wins the Ace of Clubs and returns a small Club. Plan the play

Okay, so Partner is considerably weaker than you were expecting (maybe they should have doubled instead of bidding 2 ), but you now have to try and make this "Meckwell" style 3NT contract on a combined 21 hcp, only 1 potential entry to hand and the likelyhood that no suit is going to split well for you.

Well I figured some serious stuff was going to have to go right for me here, so I have to assume the Clubs and Hearts are relatively favourable. I inserted the Club 8 which held the trick, West playing the 2. I now played a Heart to the Queen, which held, AK of Spades (East contributed the 10 and the Jack) and exited with the Q , which East took with the King and led the J , which is allowed to run round to your King. Now what?

Well I decided I might as well go for it and play East for 2245 shape and West for the doubleton 10 and I now led the Jack of Diamonds to pin West's theoretical doubleton 10. East won the Diamond Ace and the 10 duly appeared from West, who (knowing I had the Clubs completely covered) returned a third Diamond.

Now I'm down to

  Q3
  97
  -
  -

  7
  -
  9
  KJ

...and the 4th Diamond and King of Clubs duly squeezed West in the Majors, so I ended up with an overtrick on a hand where I should probably be -2. Sometimes, the Fates really do smile on you!! Yes, the defence can do a lot better.

  West                 East
  9864            J10
  A1064          J8
  102              AK63
  1032            AQ975

(Worth noting that the 8 from my hand at trick 2 was fairly essential, if marginally risky, because it made it absolutely certain that East cannot successfully continue to attack the suit. If I'd played the Jack at trick 2, he can happily lead the Q when in with the K and force my King out and run the rest of the Clubs when in with the Ace of Diamonds)

Had a nice hand with Eszter yesterday whilst playing against Clement and Mehmet (We had well over 60 kibitzers at one point!). There were no problems in the bidding - a typical case of OCP delivering the goods:

Love All, Dealer South
North
  K10875
  J8
  8
  AK1053

South
  AJ4
  AQ7
  AQJ1032
  4

Bidding
1 - 1NT
2 - 3    // Gamma   /  Hxxxx
3 - 3NT   // Relay Beta  /  4 Controls
4 - 4NT   // Epsilon   /  2nd round control
5 - 5    // Rep Epsilon   /  Shortage
6              // Enough missing a honour

I used Gamma immediately to ensure I was Declarer, to protect my red-suit tenaces. Obviously the dream hand with North would have held the King of Diamonds rather than the King of Clubs, or the Queen of Spades rather than the King (because now she'd have to have what I needed everywhere else), but at least once Eszter showed up with a shortage in Diamonds, she had to have the Ace of Clubs, which made this a 75% shot (one of two finesses).

The Play
That 75% chance turned into a 100% when Clement, on my left, led a Spade, which ran round to East's 9 and my Jack. two more rounds of Spades ending in Dummy took care of trumps, Clement having started with Qxx. In practice that lead didn't really cost the defence, because I have to finesse the Spades against West anyway (because I can pick up Q9xx in the West hand, but not in the East hand)

How to tackle the Diamonds? There's a case for taking the finesse into the West hand, because West cannot do you any damage in Hearts, but Clement's lead at trick 1 persuaded me that he had no "good" lead (it's unusual to lead a trump from Qxx against a slam), so I chose the ruffing finesse against West. Actually I feel the ruffing finesse is definitely superior in any case. Finessing against East can only be done once and therefore you cannot cope with East having Kxxx (insufficient entries to hand without taking the finesse), whereas the ruffing finesse caters for either defender having Kxxx.

I erred slightly in that I should make my first discard from Dummy a Club rather than a Heart, which caters for West having Kxxxx, because now I have the option of taking the Heart finesse (and a second outside entry back to hand) for my 13th trick. If East wins the King of Diamonds, the are splitting no worse than 4-2 so 12 tricks still assured.

In practice Clement had started with
  Q32
  K32
  K954
  Q97
so I still came out with 13 tricks, which was worth 11 IMPs (and would have been worth 100% at Pairs) because only one other pair had found the slam and they had only made 12 tricks.

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.