Author Topic: Trusting Partner's signals  (Read 2629 times)

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Offline OliverC

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Trusting Partner's signals
« on: August 31, 2017, 01:20:57 PM »
Defence is difficult at the best oftimes. Defensive signalling is intended to make life significantly easier for us, but you have to trust your Partner's signals. With o/e signals and discards, the first one is normally the most critical. The other lesson from this hand, is always to make your signals as crystal clear as possible, and try not to do anything that might confuse Partner or seem to conflict with an earlier signal (not always possible, I concede). The following hand is a really excellent example:

You are North, EW Game, Dealer South.

Bidding
West         East
1 !D           1 !S
2 !C           3 !D
3NT

You are holding

North
 !S 643
 !H 963
 !D AKQ
 !C 10752

What can you presume from the bidding? First of all West is going to be short in Spades, because they rebid 2 !C rather than 1NT and presumably have 9 cards in the Minors and probably 3-card Hearts with likely 2 Heart stops. East probably has 10-11 hcp. They have 4 or 5 Spades and probably 4-card Diamonds.

What does that mean for Partner? South is marked with length in both Majors and a definite Diamond shortage.

Eszter (in the North seat) decided to play Partner for some weight in Clubs (not an unreasonable assumption) and led the Club 7. Dummy went down and this is what she could see:

East (Dummy)
 !S AK108
 !H 54
 !D J10854
 !C Q8
               North
               !S 643
               !H 963
               !D AKQ
               !C 10752

On trick 1, Declarer played the !C Queen from Dummy and the 6 from hand, South contributing a discouraging 4. This is important to note, because the 3 and the 9 are still unaccounted for, so it's extremely unlikely that South has any help in Clubs and probably has just the 4 and the 3. (With J43, they would probably encourage with the 3).

Declarer led a small Diamonds from Dummy to their 9 and you take your Queen (South plays the 4). What now?

Have our presumptions about the outstanding hands changed at all? Yes, slightly: We now know that West started with 4 Diamonds only and so probably 5-card Clubs (no 1NT rebid). If 3-card hearts, then definitely a Spade singleton.

Since East has only 4-card Spades, Partner is pretty much guaranteed to be 5-5 in the Majors. Their exact Heart holding is still a matter for conjecture, but they probably have something like !S QJ9xx. If that is the case it's essential to get the Spades going as soon as possible.

Eszter clearly didn't try to analyse what was going on in the South/West hands, because at trick 3 she led another Club to West's 9 (South playing the 3). Another Diamond followed, taken by North's King, South showing out and asking for a Spade with the !S 7. Eszter duly switched to the !S 6. Declarer rose with Dummy's King, South playing the 2 and Declarer the 5. The !D 10 followed, South discarding the !H 7.

Now what?

East (Dummy)
 !S A108
 !H 54
 !D J8
 !C -
               North
               !S 43
               !H 963
               !D -
               !C 105

Does the !H 7 change anything? Absolutely not! We've won 3 tricks to this point and Declarer has taken 2 Clubs and a top Spade. Getting rid of Dummy's other top Spade must be the priority. If Partner doesn't have the Ace of Hearts, we cannot defeat this contract, n because Declarer will have 5 Clubs, 2 Spades, 2 Diamonds and the Ace of Hearts, but we must drive out the Spade Ace in case Partner does have the Ace of Hearts, because Declarer can only get off Dummy in Hearts in order to reach their long Clubs. At trick 7, therefore, it's essential to continue the Spade attack. You cannot really rely on the !H 7 as a signal because Partner's choice of Heart discards may be somewhat constrained (Give them !H AQJ72, for example).

In fact I held !H AQ1087 and as South I could have made Eszter's job much easier here by discarding the !H 10 rather than the 7, but since Declarer is marked with a Spade shortage and at least 1 Heart stop, I'd already signalled for Spades and clearly she'd "received and understood" that message, it never occurred to me that she might now forget about the Spade request and switch to a Heart instead (but it should have occurred to me, because that's exactly what she did, switching to the !H 6). I can take my Ace of Hearts but now we have no way to prevent Declarer from taking the rest. A Spade continuation dooms Declarer to -2 whatever they do.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2017, 01:29:46 PM by OliverC »
Oliver