Razor Thin

[OliverC]

OCP is a fairly aggressive system, and aims to get us to thin games based on fit. Today Eszter and I landed in a game that was positively anorexic! LOL This turned out to be a very interesting hand from a play perspective:

North
  A874
  A1032
  7
  K1086

South
  J1052
  K865
  QJ104
  A

Love All, Dealer North (No opposition bidding)

1   -  1
2   -  2NT⁽¹⁾
4 - All Pass

⁽¹⁾ Long-suit trial bid in Spades

West led the 4 of Clubs. I played low from Dummy and took East's Queen with my Ace. Prospects did not look too good. I've at least 1 inescapable loser in Spades, Hearts and Diamonds (and that's if the suits split), but I will be lucky to escape a second loser in Spades because I am missing the 9 as well as the KQ, so if West has H9x I'm probably doomed. Clubs are probably not a problem, because if West leads another I'll try the 10, butgetting West to lead one might be tricky.

In an attempt to persuade Opps to do me a favour, I led the Diamond Queen at trick 2 (hoping to persuade them I was desperate to ruff Diamonds), which was taken by East's King. The favour I was looking for duly appeared when East returned the Jack of Hearts. I won with my King and then finessed the 10 in Dummy, on which East played the 4. So far so good (I've escaped a Heart loser).

Now I ruffed the 8 of Clubs in my hand (East following with the 5 and West with the 2) and tried the ruffing finesse in Diamonds, throwing Dummy's 10 . No luck, West played the 3 and East won with the Ace and then returned the 2. How do you play?

At some tables East had overcalled Diamonds. Had that happened I would undoubtedly have played the 4, but without that information I went up with the 10 and West ruffed with the Queen (and I won the trick with Dummy's Ace).

The situation is now

  A874
  3
  -
  K

  J1052
  8
  4
  -

Not a single Spade has been played. East is known to have started with Jx, AKxxxx, and Qx. West originally led the 4 and has subsequently played the 2 and is known to have started with Qxx, and xx. How do you continue?

.
.
.

I decided that I was going to play West for both Spade honours, on the basis that East has already showed up with 10 HCP and if they had started with either or both of the Spade honours, would probably have overcalled at some stage with a nice 6-card Diamond suit. It's unlikely I can win this if West has KQ9, but if East had 9x, I can pin the 9. First I cashed the King of Clubs, discarding the Diamond from my hand (not a Spade, because I want to endplay Opps). I think this is a better move than discarding a Spade, because my plan was always to lead a small Spade from Dummy towards the J10xx in my hand.

This caters for KQx with West, but if, by some chance, East had Hx, especially Kx, it's very unlikely they would play low. In fact, when I played a small Spade from Dummy, East played the 9,
and my 10 was taken my West's Queen, which was perfect. West now had to lead another Spade or give me a ruff 'n' sluff in Clubs. He chose the latter, and I ruffed in hand, discarding a Spade in Dummy, and West then covered my Jack of Spades with the King and Dummy was "high".

Making 4 was moderately successful. Most of the field were in part-scores. Only 2 other pairs were in 4 and one of those went off.


The thing about this hand is that sometimes you have to wait and try to find out more about the opposing hands before committing yourself irrevocably to one particular line of play or another. Here Spades was always the critical suit. I could have led the Jack of Spades earlier, but I would have been doomed to fail if West had started with Q9x. Similarly I hadn't the information to place the majority of the Spades with West or the point that West was more likely to have the King and Queen, because East hadn't overcalled his strong 6-card Diamonds, until West ruffed the 3rd round of Diamonds. Everything up till that point was trying to find ways to save a trick (as in Heart) in case the Spade position was unfavourable and I had to lose 2 tricks there.