Cash Cash Cash

[OliverC]

A really interesting defensive problem came up in a hand I played with Eszter earlier tonight:

EW Game, Dealer South

You are North, holding

North
A9765
3
AQ
A10862

Bidding
South     West    North     East
2NT(1)    3       4         4
5         5       X            All Pass

You lead the Ace of Diamonds. Dummy goes down with

East (Dummy)
K1032
QJ9762
9
73
                   North (You)
                    A9765
                    3
                    AQ
                    A10862

On the Ace of Diamonds, Partner plays the 10 and West the 2. What do you play next?

.
.
.

What do you think is going on here? Is it possible that Partner is not 5-5+ in the Minors and has a Club Pre-empt and only 2 Diamonds? No, it patently isn't. because that would give West an 8-card Diamond suit. Rule No 1 when You lead a side-suit and there's a singleton in Dummy is that Partner will try to give you a suit preference signal.

Why would Partner ask for Spades rather than Clubs? If they're 5-5+ in the Minors they must have plenty if Diamonds to choose from. Might they have a singleton Spade and a singleton Heart and be looking for a ruff? What would that mean for the West hand? QJx, AKxxx, Jxxxx, -. That would give Partner x, x, K10xxx, KQJ9xx. Not impossible, I concede, but there's no particular reason for Partner (who doesn't know you have 5-card Clubs) to point you away from the Clubs if he has that holding, because he cannot know for sure that you have the Ace of Spades or that you have 5-card Clubs rather than 4.

On the other hand, the above scenario is slightly ignoring the bidding. West has come in with 3 , vulnerable, on an 11-count and a 5-card suit according to that scenario. That is much less likely, in my view. Much more likely that West has a 6-carder in Hearts, which means Partner is void in Hearts. So why the Spade signal? It can only be that Partner (who doesn't know your Black suit (or holdings, for that matter) holdings for sure), is trying to tell you they do have a possible trick in Spades, and don't have the Ace or King of Clubs. That gives them QJx, -, K10xxx, QJ9xx, which means West has exactly one card in each Black suit.

It's a bit of a guessing game, to be sure, but I the second scenario I've outlined there is a little more consistent with the bidding. I think you must cash the Ace of Spades and then try to cash the Ace of Clubs rather than immediately trying to give Partner a ruff with a trump he's unlikely to hold.

I was South, holding QJ4, -, K10843, QJ954. I guessed from the bidding that Partner had only 1 trump on this bidding, so their double of 5 likely was based on 3 Aces. I can't be certain what the / position is, but if Partner has Axxx, x, Axxx, Axxx, Declarer has xx, AK10xxx, Jxx, Kx, and I don't want them to cash the Ace of Clubs, but to underlead their Ace of Spades. Declarer might get the Spades wrong, but even if they don't. I can win the second Spade later in the hand, to lead a Club through Declarer. I felt we probably needed to take this 2 off to compensate for our missed game (If North has the A , AQ , and Axxx, we're making 5 )

Actually, I think now I probably thought about this too much, because if Declarer has that holding, he's always off, even if it's only -1 rather than -2 and anything is better than nothing if the alternative is to risk 5 actually making. The possibility that Partner had 5-card Spades had not actually occurred to me.