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DEFENDING A REAL HAND BY COUNTING TWO SUITS!
Your hand
754 AK987 Q53 K6
The bidding
After two passes, you open 1 heart. LHO overcalls one spade. Partner jumps to 4 hearts, and after some thought, RHO bids/guesses four spades which ends the auction.
The play
Partner leads the Queen of hearts. Dummy’s hand is:
9863 23 J2 AQJ95
Partner continues with a low heart which declarer (unsurprisingly) ruffs. Declarer draws all of your spades, partner showing up with a small singleton. Declarer now leads the ten of clubs, low from dummy, and you win your King. What do you do now?
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You should ask me what your partner discarded on the second and third spade! Your partner discarded the ten of diamonds followed by a small heart (standard discards). So what do you do?
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Your partner clearly has something in diamonds. Should we lead a diamond? I suspect that in most of my classes this would be a nearly unanimous choice. Leading up to weakness, watching partner’s signal, the clubs are ready to run, etc., etc. But before we do the obvious thing, let’s stop and think.
What does partner have in diamonds? Surely with both the Ace and King they would have led one of these instead of a heart – if not on the first trick, then certainly at trick two! So declarer has either the Ace or King. Can we tell which it is? Not really. LHO would have a one spade overcall either way, and partner would have a four heart bid either way.
Do we need to lead a diamond now? Is there a risk?
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If our diamond trick(s) will go away, we need to lead a diamond. If not, there IS a risk. If partner has the Ace and you lead a diamond, declarer can guess to play low and the Jack in the dummy will force partner to win his Ace, promoting declarer’s King into a trick. Not good. Partner’s signal of the ten should also promise the nine (they would not waste the ten unless they could afford to). So if you force the declarer to break the diamond suit, covering the Jack will get TWO diamond tricks for your side.
Can declarer throw away their diamonds on dummy’s clubs? This is certainly something we should WORRY about, but not ASSUME. How many clubs does declarer have? How many diamonds?
You should ask me what your partner ‘s club was. Why? Because your partner should be showing count in the club suit, which might help you figure out how many clubs and diamonds declarer has. Your partner’s club was the four. Can you tell anything from the four? Does it matter?
Just for practice, what club holdings could your partner have? Answer: 4, 42, 43, or 874. With 8742 or 8743 they would play the EIGHT to make it easier for you, right? ((FIRST RULE OF DEFENSIVE SIGNALING: BE AS CLEAR AS POSSIBLE!)) But the four is no real help in this case, so what should you do?
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Try to work it out, and I will give you the answer next week!
Just kidding.... here it is.:)
We may have no idea how many clubs declarer has, and we may have no idea how many diamonds declarer has, but we DO know something important.
“THE TWO-SUIT COUNT”
How many spades did declarer start with? FIVE.
How many hearts did declarer start with? ONE.
How many minor suit cards did declarer start with? SEVEN.
So after they play five clubs from the dummy, how many diamonds will declarer have? TWO.
It doesn’t matter whether declarer started with 1,2,3,4,or 5 clubs. After the dummy’s clubs are all played, they will have exactly TWO diamonds remaining – try it!
If those diamonds are Kx, you will get two diamond tricks and beat the contract. If they are Ax, it wasn’t going to matter – you will get the one and only diamond trick you were going to get anyway. This is a critical point -- in one case, you needed to AVOID breaking a new suit. In the other, it didn’t matter.
So, as odd as it may seem, the ONLY lead now that will definitely beat this contract (of possible) is a CLUB (!). Now sit back and wait for your two diamond tricks, and congratulate yourself for some excellent play.
Here are the critical lesson points of this hand:
· Count!
· If declarer is going to have to lead a suit eventually, it is almost always better to let them do it
· Count!
· Partner can NOT order you what to lead; they can only try to let you know what is in their hand
· Count!
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