Detective Work
Last Thursday in our league match in second division - a match I’d like to forget sooner rather than later, this was the last board:
Board 16
Dealer: West
Vul: E/W
Teams
North
♠ KQ107
♥ K9
♦ KQ53
♣ AJ10
West East
♠ 8654 ♠ 3
♥ AJ432 ♥ 6
♦ 872 ♦ J1094
♣ 5 ♣ 9876432
South
♠ AJ92
♥ Q10875
♦ A6
♣ KQ
South West North East
pass 1♣ pass
1♥ pass 2NT pass
6NT
I’m not proud of my bidding, but as it happens it kept us away from a dead 6♠. East lead the ♦Jack won in dummy. Now 4 rounds of ♠ was played, ending in Dummy. Declarer now tackled the Heart suit. A small ♥ was lead to the King and when a ♥ was led towards Dummy it was all over for -1. They had stopped at 3 NT at the other table so it was 11 Imps out.
Over the next 48 hours I was tossing and turning trying to figure out what the right play in ♥ is. I even asked some experts and I got this from Jeffery Smith:
“Get Sherlock Holmes on the case here....
Cash 2 rounds of spades noting East shows out (carefully preserving 2 entries back to hand for later). Cash another round of ♦'s.
Cash 2 rounds of clubs noting West shows out.
We now know East started with 7 clubs and 1 spade. If we trust the ♦ signals following suit 2-7 then East is 1-1 4-7
The odds now overwhelmingly favour finesse 9♥ as that only loses if East has singleton Jack!
Instructive discovery play hand where the club cashing of two tricks reveals the most likely layout!”
Espen Lindqvist was shorter, but in essence said the same:
"Only improvement I can see is to cash two rounds of club to discover the 7-1 split, dramaticly increasing the chance of West having the ♥ Jack"
I can only add that even if you don’t trust their signals, the odds now are in favour of finessing the 9 as East only has 3 empty spaces whilst West has 6, making West odds on favourite to have any specific card in ♥ .
What if West don’t show out on the second club? Then you have to go with the a priori assumptions and play a ♥ to the King. Doing the detective work dosen’t always give you all the proof you need, but it is always worth while doing!
Espen Gisvold
PS
If you see a hand you think is worth mentioning please leave me a note at: Espen
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