Help
We’re playing in a club duplicate and our opps on this round are solid citizens, best classed as intermediates. We have a routine auction to a cold 3N.
The opening lead is surprising…LHO tables the spade Jack.
We pause to consider both the implications of this lead and our line of play.
The lead is either utterly bizarre or it is shortness. In a perfect world it’s from J9 doubleton but the world is rarely perfect and that’s an unlikely combination.
We can’t see any reason not to cover with the queen. RHO gives this some thought then plays the King. One can’t put a huge amount of weight on plays by intermediate players but the cover would be clearly wrong if she lacked the 9. Imagine us with A98…covering gives us 4 spade tricks. So we tentatively decide to play RHO for K9xx(x).
We win with the ace. We have 2 spades, at least 2 hearts, 3 diamonds and 2 clubs so the contract is safe. But this is matchpoints so we would like to maximize our tricks. Hearts is the obvious place to look for them…a 3=3 break with the king onside and we have 11 winners and maybe some squeeze chances in the minors.
So we cross to dummy to take a heart finesse. We could use either minor, but we’ll start with a club to the king. The heart finesse wins, with LHO playing a high spot, suggesting the start of an echo. Most intermediates, if they ever give count, tend to always give count. Moreover, very few ever falsecard.
Ok, time for another trip to dummy. We cash the diamond king then low to the A. We do this because of the slight chance that the diamond J10 drop in 3 rounds. To our surprise, and disappointment, RHO follows once, small, then pitches the spade 2.
Hmmm….so LHO had J10xxxx in diamonds. Many would lead a diamond from that holding, given that it’s an unbid suit. The reason we’re disappointed is that the ‘normal’ lead of a diamond gives us 4 diamond tricks on the go…and we’re getting only 3. At imps, we’d barely notice…so we maybe lose 1 imp, big deal. But at mps, that trick will be worth around half a board, maybe more.
Ok, let’s not lose sight of what’s going on. We’ve learned more than just that diamonds are 6-1. RHO is not pitching from an original K9xx in spades….if she has, we can recover that ‘lost’ diamond trick by going after spades now. So she almost surely began with 5 spades.
We’re in dummy. Cashing our last diamond winner would set up LHO’s long diamonds and it’s just barely possible that he has the heart King. It’s unlikely…holding up could be dangerous if we didn’t hold the Jack but he might correctly infer that we rate to have our actual holding because it’s the suit we attacked first.
Anyway, there’s no rush…we still have a spade entry if we need it. So we take a second winning heart finesse, on which LHO completes his echo. We’re persuaded that this is an honest play so what do we know? Anytime we need to decide ‘what do we do now?’ We should, before answering, consider the more important question…’what do we know’, bearing in mind that often ‘what we know’ is really ‘what do we know for sure and what do we infer’.
Here, we infer that spades are 1=5, and hearts are 2=4. What we know is that diamonds are 6=1.
If RHO has 5=4=1=3, which seems likely, she’s going to be susceptible to being thrown in with the 4th heart to lead away from that spade 9….since we have the 8 in hand and the 10 in dummy, that would get us back that lost diamond trick.
Ok…we have the makings of a plan. But we can’t just cash the heart ace and exit in hearts….RHO will still have a club with which to exit. So…how do we remedy that? We can’t just play club Ace and another…LHO has 4 clubs and could easily take two winners, then endplay dummy in diamonds.
But…if we exit a low club, what can they do? If LHO wins, he has to play a diamond or another club…neither hurts us at all. Nor is RHO any better off. She must exit in clubs or hearts, and neither hurts us.
So we lead a low club, not caring who wins. If LHO wins and sticks us in dummy, we use dummy’s last heart to cross to hand, cash the club ace and exit a low heart. If, instead, we’re put in hand, we cash the heart and club aces and exit a low heart and RHO surrenders.
Sure enough, RHO had started with K97xx K108x x Qxx.
We managed to salvage a slightly above average board. Had we settled for 10 tricks we’d have been tied for bottom.
I am primarily an imp player. But it’s the occasional hand such as this that helps me to enjoy matchpoints as well.