An illustrative hand for defensive carding came up during some practice hands on last night's OCP Complex seminar in IAC. It's a simple enough hand, but if the defence don't have their act together, you could easily miss the point and not get the tricks you need:
You are East. North South have had a "complex" auction as follows
1
- 1
// 8-10 any shape
1
- 1NT // Any 4441 / Relay
2
- 3
// Singleton Club / Range Beta
3
- 4
// Max, 3 Controls
You lead your 8 of Diamonds, and this is what you can see:
East 742
Q1098
( 8 ) AQ653
South (Dummy) AK106
65
K62
10974
Partner wins the Ace of Diamonds and returns the 3, which you ruff. What now?
If you don't
underlead your AQ
with the 3, then you're not "with the program". Partner is likely to have 8-9 HCP on this auction and Declarer is
known to have a singleton Club. Cashing the Ace of Clubs and then leading a small one is therefore
not going to work. Partner's 3
return is
telling you they have the King of Clubs, since clearly they had 4 Diamonds to choose from when they returned a Diamond for you to ruff and they chose their
lowest. On only have
one chance to get this right, because as soon as Declarer gains the lead, the first thing they're going to do is to draw trumps. Mentally "giving" Partner the Ace of Diamonds and King of Clubs puts them right in the region of high card points you would expect them to have, and it's utterly consistent with the bidding (North being known to have a singleton Club).
Like I said a very simple hand and few experts would get this one wrong, even on different bidding that didn't point to a Club Singleton with North, but it's amazing how some [even advanced] players
would fail here.