Playing in the finals of bracket 4 (out of 25 brackets) in the Tuesday-Wednesday
Gatlinburg 2005 regional KO team event, you encounter the following defensive
situation.
Dummy
ª
Q943
©
---
¨
KJT953
§
765
You
ª
J75
©
QJ9532
Declarer You Dummy Partner
¨
6
1 ¨
1 ©
1 ª
2 ©
§
AQ4
Double* 3 ©
5 ¨
Pass
6 ¨
All Pass.
The double of 2 ©
showed
3-card ª
support.
You lead the ©
Q, which
is ruffed in dummy. Declarer continues with the ¨
K and follows with the ¨
J, covered by partner's
queen and declarer's ace. You discard a small heart. Declarer now leads the ©
10, and you pause to assess
the defensive prospects. You feel good as declarer is certain to lose two §
tricks to you. Should you play a small
heart as a suit-preference signal? What heart
do you play?
More on that defensive situation in a moment.
One of the challenges in bridge is envisioning problems that you can create in
the minds of your opponents. We just looked at the beginning of the hand from the defender's
viewpoint. We will now look at the same hand from my standpoint as the declarer.
One of the joys of being a bridge pro is when your client-partner misbids and
you get to an impossible contract, and as the pro, you somehow manage to fulfill the
contract. Sometimes you get lucky and find an exotic play that works. Sometimes
you find a way to mislead the defense. It can happen in lots of different ways.
On the above hand as declarer I saw:
Dummy
ª
Q943
©
---
¨
KJT953
§
765
Declarer
ª
AT6
©
AKT4
¨
A842
§
K8
We arrived at the wrong contract when my partner first misbid by not making a
negative double (which would have been followed quickly by 3NT by me), and then
showing game-going values with an intended preempt of 5 ¨
s.
I never imagined that 6 ¨
would be a hopeless contract when I bid it.
But I saw a ray of hope. If I could lull the defender into playing second hand
low on the second round of hearts, I would be able to discard all three of
dummy's clubs away on my hearts, and then all I would have to do is hold the
spade
losses to one trick. So I played as
described. And it worked. The defender, perhaps distracted by counting the
diamonds, or perhaps remembering an overtrick that his partner gave away
foolishly on a previous hand, or just lazily playing second-hand-low assuming that I was trumping my low
hearts in dummy -- for whatever motive, he carelessly let me win the trick with
the ©
10.
The defender should have taken time to count my tricks. He could see
6 diamond
tricks and perhaps
4 spade
tricks. The only way that I could
have legitimately have 12 tricks would be if I also held the ace and king of
hearts. And if I held those hearts, then he absolutely should have
covered my ©
10 with the
jack.
I quickly discarded dummy's 3 small clubs on the ©
10, ace and king, and then
I paused to consider the spade
situation.
There are 3 different ways to take 2 finesses in the spade
suit. I could lead first from my hand and guess to play LHO for either of
the missing honors, and if that finesse lost, then finesse my RHO for the other
missing honor. Or I could lead originally from dummy and play RHO for at
least one honor, finessing twice. Either way, I needed only one of two
finesses to work.
In my hand after cashing the hearts, I chose to lead the §
K as a discovery play. My LHO quickly
covered with the club ace -- in his panic over his mistake in the heart
suit he certainly wasn't going to let me win another trick with an
unprotected honor. That clue was all that I needed. I was now certain that my
RHO held at least one spade
honor for his
raise to two hearts, so I continued by leading the spade
queen from dummy, to make my slam. If the §
K
had been ducked smoothly, I probably would have guessed that my LHO held the ª
K, and still gone down in my contract.
(After playing a spade
to the queen and
having it lose to the king, I would finesse RHO for the ª
J and that also would lose).
So I fulfilled the contract and we ended up winning our KO match by 13 IMPs. I
felt the joy of my orchestration on this hand. I had been successful in
envisioning a situation where I lulled my opponent into a misdefense. And
we earned over 48 master points for our victory.