Often the Dare hands present unexpected twists that provide an opportunity. Hand 6 yesterday is an example. It's a squeeze hand and the idea, I think, was for it to go as follows:
The auction was 1NT-3NT. The opening lead is the
A, dummy comes down, declarer sees:
76
A86
7654
KQ32
9843
K72
AKQ
A87
Declarer can see 0+2+3+3=8 top tricks once he gets the lead. The 9th trick could come from a 3-3 split in either minor, or perhaps from a squeeze. We first suppose that Lho cashes the
AKQ and switches to, perhaps, a small
. Declarer wins in hand and, with the squeeze possibility in mind, leads his last spade. There is a lot of lingo in squeezes, this is called rectifying the count. The reason is this: Lho holds both minors and needs to hold on to four cards in both of those suits. After four rounds of spades and two rounds of hearts, he can't do it. 4+2=6, 13-6=7, so he only has room in his hand for 7 minor suit cards. He is forced to come down either to 3 diamonds or 3 clubs, and then the hand comes in.
At my table things got tricky. I am not big on acronyms, but I Clyde Love in his book on squeezes speaks of BLUE.
B= Busy in two suits, in this case clubs and diamonds
L=Losers. This means getting down to where you have all but 1 of the remaining tricks. Playing that last spade did that for us.
U=upper. At least one of the threats (the long diamond and the long club are the threats) have to be in the hand that plays after the victim.
E=Entry. After the squeeze produces a winner, you have to be able to get to that winner to cash it. And the entry needs to be well placed, in the suit of one of the threats.
Now for defense. The defense cannot usually do much about B and U, but they might be able to attack L and E. For example, maybe the spade cashing is not a good idea since it sets declarer on the road to rectifying the count. At my table they went after both L and E, attacking my
entry as I set out to rectify the count.
Let's take a look at the hand from the viewpoint of my Lho:
76
A86
7654
KQ32
AKQ
void
J9832
J9654
He can see the threats in dummy and see the discarding problem ahead. He decides that the spades can wait, he needs to attack E so he leads a small
. His partner produces the T, declarer (me) takes the A and leads a
. Lho wins and leads the
J, declarer wins on the board, comes to hand with a
and leads another
. Lho wins and leads the
9. Declarer must now kiss the squeeze goodbye. Yes, there is still an entry to the board with hearts but it's not adequate. Declarer had to make some discards as well while rectifying the count, the timing is of when the entry is in a side suit. Congrats to Lho!
But But! How about Rho? We have played three rounds of
, declarer's
9 is a threat against Rho and so is a long
. As mentioned, this hand has features!
But But But the count is still not rectified. and we don't want to be giving up our
threat to rectify it. SO: We duck the third club.
And now it matters which card I played when I led the third
from my hand. I erred, pitching a
from the board. I survived, the hand was complex enough that I survived, but I needed to realize that the minor suit squeeze against Lho was dead, I should bury it, and concentrate on the major suit squeeze against my Rho. moreover, I am going to have to duck that
continuation to rectify the count, and then with another
I am going to have to find a pitch from my hand, which must be a
. So the long
in my hand is not a threat I can keep, I need the long
on the board as a threat. So the correct play by declarer on the third spades is to pitch a
from the board, duck a club to rectify the count, cash the high clubs and diamonds, squeezing Rho with the
9 in hand and the
8 on th e board as the threats.
Whew and double whew. I wish I could say I got all of the details right but I didn't. A very interesting hand.
This is a very complex hand, but there is a fairly simple point worth looking back at, namely the
shift at T2. Lho realized he was going to have problems with discarding, he went after the board's entries. This can come up pretty often.