You are South and have ended up in 4
after the following sequence:
NS Vulnerable, Dealer EastBiddingEast South West North No 1
No 1
3
No
(1) No 3NT
4
All Pass
(1) We play that a bid in front of Partner here shows extra values
West leads the Queen of Diamonds, and you can see
North (Dummy)
A1032
97
AJ2
AK102
South Q8
AQJ6532
54
Q3
You win the Ace of Diamonds in Dummy. How do you play the Hearts? Actually as the cards lie it doesn't really matter, but I ignored the possible (and unlikely) finesse in favour of the Ace of Hearts and then the Queen, won by West's King, East discarding a Diamond. West now leads the 6 of Spades. How do you plan the rest of this contract?
If you play low from Dummy, then you need to read a bit more about Declarer play generally and counting the hand in particular, for two very good reasons:
- Allowing East to gain the lead at this point is the only possible way you can go off in this contract. If East has the K!S, they'll win, cash the King of Diamonds, and then promote Partner's 10 by leading a 3rd Diamond through.
- If West has the King of Spades, you don't need to finesse against them. Clearly East started with 7-card Diamonds and 1 Heart and it's almost a racing certainty that the majority of the Clubs lie with West, but even if somehow they aren't, you have an absolute 100% squeeze position against both defenders here:
I took the Ace of Spades, crossed back to the Queen of Clubs and ran
all of my Hearts, coming down to
-
-
J
AK10
Q
2
5
3
On the last Heart Dummy can cheerfully let go of the Jack of Diamonds. If West has the King of Spades, he cannot retain 3 Clubs, and I know for a fact that East cannot possibly have 3-card Clubs, because they
must have the King of Diamonds. In fact I could count that East still had 2 Diamonds left and had already discarded 2 Spades, so the only danger to my 12th trick was East having the K!S and K!D and West
only having Clubs left at this point. During the run of the Hearts, West had discarded 2 small Clubs, and East had discarded none. If I had been in 6
rather than 4
, I might have considered taking the Club finesse at this point, but in 4
I was content to play West for the King of Spades and still made my 12 because they had the J!C
and the King of Spades.
The critical thing about this hand, however, is that you don't
need to risk East having the King of Spades. Grade School maths will tell you 1 Spade, 6 Hearts, 1 Diamond and 3 Clubs comes to 11 tricks. It is physically impossible for West to be void in Clubs. That would give East 14+ cards in their hand, since they're already known to have at least 6 Diamonds and 1 Heart, and a Club void with West would give them 7 Clubs. Declarer is cast iron for 11 tricks if they go up with the Ace of Spades at trick 4 and cross back to hand with the Queen of Clubs to draw the last trump.
West started with
K976,
K104,
Q,
J8754, and East with
J54,
8,
K1098763,
96
