Should declarer work this one out?

[jcreech]

I kibitzed this hand, and declarer made what I considered a give-up play at trick five.  I would like to pose an alternative line, and would like to know if it would be plausible at the table.

The contract was 6 by South (rotated for discussion purposes).  I won't bother with the auction as both tables were in the same contract.

  J4
  AKJT7
  AK8
  A52

  A
  96432
  J76
  K864

The opening lead is a spade: 5,4,6,A
T2: 2, 3, A, 5
T3: the J is ruffed
T4: a low heart to the K, LHO pitching the K

At this point the actual declarer played another heart, effectively giving up a club and possibly a diamond.  I think a third heart is premature.  I also think that the opening leader should have pitched a diamond and kept a spade to make the position harder to read; the pitches say to me that he is coming down to only minor-suit cards, and that RHO started with six spade, three hearts, and so only four minor-suit cards.  On this defense, it should have been easy to find the winning line.  So lets take a step back, and have our RHO retain a spade.

So at trick five, the only chance is to find the Q doubleton, and depending on which defender drops the queen, decide on how to proceed.  As it happens, it is RHO with the doubleton queen, so the suit is stripped; a third round would allow the diamond to be ruffed and RHO still with a safe exit.  So now you have to assume RHO is 6-3-2-2, any other lay of the cards will defeat you; you play the top two clubs and see the Q drop from RHO.  Now it doesn't matter whether you play the diamond or a heart, you just have to avoid playing a club.  If you read the hand correctly, RHO will be endplayed into giving you a ruff and sluff.  Just don't pitch the club from the wrong hand!

Since you have paid your dues to the bridge gods, the slam comes home.  The question, though, remains:  should declarer have found this line at the table?

The full hand:

Dealer:  North
Vul:  Both

            J4
            AKJT7
            AK8
            A52

  K532          QT9876
                   Q85
  T9543        Q2
  JT97            Q3

            A
            96432
            J76
            K864

[kenberg]

The form of scoring might matter. At matchpoints he might decide to try for down 1 but even then the third heart is premature. Ducking a club seems like the best try for 11 tricks.

But wait. What about T1???


As far as inferences go, it is the spade play at T 1 that gets my attention. Rho played the 6? We should be able to draw some conclusions from that. If Rho holds the QT you would expect the T to be played and really the T from KT also since pard has hardly underled an A here.  Anyway, not the 6. The auction might matter a bit, since perhaps Rho could be confident declarer has the stiff A, but still the 6 is a very surprising card and it would be reasonable to think that at least maybe Rho has exactly what it turns out he has. If he is, say, missing the 9 why would he play the 6 instead of the T?

As to the pitch of the K later, pitching a spade seems completely natural, and if the K is anything it is probably suit preference. It wasn't but it could have been. Maybe reverse suit preference? Who knows? To borrow from Freud, sometimes a spade is just a spade.

The inference from the T1 play gives us hope but there is also the inference of What Else? We are going to put Rho in with a and if he has a that he can and does lead then that might allow us to score our J but we will still lose a . So we have to make sure Rho does not have a when we put him in. So we lay down the AK. Voila, the Q falls. Now we are home if Rho holds either 1 or 2 clubs. Can he hold just one club? That makes him 7=3=2=1 but it is possible. So we lead a to the A on the board and then a small from the board. If the small is ruffed that's fine, he has only spades left in his hand. If the small club is not ruffed then we take the A and lead a .


As mentioned above, that 6 at T1 could give us hope that this play is working, maybe Rho should have played a higher hoping to deceive declarer. But of course that could deceive partner also.

Still, I think the logic is: If Rho has Qx and x or xx, we can make this, and if he doesn't have that holding then as near as I can tell we cannot make it.

 

[jcreech]

Sorry, this was set up in a team/IMPs format, so making the contract is paramount.  Which is part of the reason I was stunned at the give up T5.

I thought about saying something about the 6 at T1 and the inferences it might hold.  Good spot, Ken!  I considered the defenders to be of intermediate skills, and East's carding seemed very more helpful to declarer than his partner.  Nonetheless, declarer did not use the abundance of inferences and went down.

At matchpoints, I might be more inclined to go for the possible down-one line of playing clubs.  The 3-3 club break is far more likely than the Qx of diamonds, but at IMPs you should look for ways to make the hand, not ways to possibly limit the number of tricks you will go down.  I know that, at IMPs, if I played for the 3-3 clubs and found that I could strip and dip to make, it would take a few hands to mentally get my head back onto the present hand instead of kicking myself up one way and back the other.

[kenberg]

Yes, and even at matchpoints it is often right to try to bring in a slam contract even if that could lead to an extra undertrick. Some will have stopped in 4 , it is not all that great a slam. If the contract goes down you lose the same amount to them whether you are down 1 or down 2, but if you bring the contract home you are beating them.