Sunday, May 06, 2007

Nice one for the defense

Friday we encountered a nice hand, but opponents fell asleep. Put yourself in their shoes.

You hold:
Kxxxx
Kx
Jxx
xxx

Everyone Vulnerable, your partner opens 1, RHO (= me) intervenes 1NT, and everyone passes.

What do you lead?

The player at the table started with a low which worked out the best possible way, but they didn't realise it. In dummy you get:
Txx
Q9xx
Q9xx
Tx

Partner takes A, continues with the Q and a small to your K. Declarer discards T. You continue with 2 more s. Partner asks for a switch (playing Odd/Even signals, he plays 5 and discards T), while declarer throws away a and a from dummy while discarding a and a small from his hand.

Your turn again: what do you play?

At the table, a was played and I claimed 7 tricks.

Here's the full deal:

Dealer:East
Vul:Both
Scoring:MP
Txx
Q9xx
Q9xx
Tx
Kxxxx
Kx
Jxx
xxx
AQx
Jxxx
T
AQxxx
Jx
ATx
AK8xx
KJx

I got triple squeezed on the 5th , so I had to bare my A (baring K would be a disaster, and discarding a is throwing my 7th trick away).

How could West know what to do? Well, it's pretty simple imo. I don't discard any in my hand, so I must have 5 of them. With 4 I would keep them in dummy and discard one from my hand. I showed 2 s, I must have 3-4s and 2-3s. Either I have Ax and ATxx, or Kxx and ATx. Looking at my discarding, I think it's clear that I only have 3 s (the unblocking T at first opportunity), a 5332 is more likely to overcall 1NT rather than a 5422 with a good 5 card suit, so the best chance for defeating the contract should be to play a low from Kx and hope your partner has A. Another clue that might strengthen this idea is that partner would probably act with a good 6 card (AQJ9xx or KQJ9xx is good enough to either double or rebid the suit), so he'll only have 5 of them.

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