Dare gas interesting individual hands. My purpose in this note is to look at a frequent theme: Assumptions
Assumptions take many forms, not easily classified, but I will divide them into cautious and desperate.
Cautious: It all looks good, but what could go wrong?
Desperate: This looks bad, what can we do?
I will give one example of each from the May 13 Dare.
Cautious:
You are in 4
. no opposition bidding, the opening lead is the
5.
: K85
" K863
: T2
: AQ82
: AQ7643
: A2
: K43
C: 43
OK, this looks good. Unless the spades are 4-0, which you cannot do anything about, you have 6+2+0+1 =9 sure tricks and all you need is a successful finesse in either minor to bring you up to 10 tricks. If both finesses work you make an overtrick. But suppose both finesses fail? This will happen about one time out of four, so it's worth worrying about since this is something we can cope with by ruffing the third
in dummy. While an adverse ruff is possible it is not all that likely so win the opening lead on the board and lead a
. If it wins, you have ten tricks. It loses and a
comes back. Play the Q. If it wins you have 10 tricks. It loses. Now you are very glad that you played this way. A
comes back, won on your left and another
. Well, ruffing with the 8 seems right, Rho follows, and there you are.
So this is a case where you take a pessimistic view and see what might go wrong, and take measures that hopefully cope with misfortune.
Desperate:
You are in 4
. no opposition bidding, the opening lead is the
J.
: 8752
: AK76
: A3
: J85
: A964
: 43
: KQ72
: A43
Ok, it might be an exaggeration to say the situation is desperate but surely you are not making this if trumps are 4-1 so we make the optimistic assumption that trumps are 3-2 and see what that gets us. We still need to find 10 tricks. Often, with weakish trumps, the best line is to play 2 rounds only. In order to control that, we win the opening lead and duck a
. The plan is to later, as soon as possible, take the A. The opponents will still have a high trump but we are on lead and hopefully we have 10 tricks.
So: We win the
lead, we duck a
, we win the return, we play the
A.
In the discussion after the game, the following came up: After the duck of the
, suppose a
is continued. Win the A. So, after three tricks, the situation is
: 87
: K76
: A3
: J85
: 96
: 4
: KQ72
: A43
We have lost one trick, everyone followed to the second
. We can now claim the 4
contract, regardless of how the remaining cards lie. It's a good exercise to see that as long as we play the cards in the correct order we will be losing a trick to the high
and losing a
trick, but nothing else.
Here is the right order:
to the A, ruff a
,
to the A, small
to the K,
Q throwing a
. Nothing ca go wrong. Say, for example, when you lead the small
to the K it is ruffed. No problem. They lead a club, you win, you cash the
Q throwing a
. It just doesn't matter when they take the high trump. If, after you have cashed the
Q and thrown a
they are still holding the
Q, ruff the last
on the board. If overruffed, fine, they take a
, you take the rest. If not over ruffed, ruff the last
back to hand. If they still have't ruffed, cash the
A. That's trick 10 if they don't ruff, if they do you still have a trump winner on the board . Sooner or later they get their high trump and a
, but that's all.
It is worthwhile to see how this happens. After three tricks we have won two tricks so we need 8 more. Let's look at potential tricks. Two spades in dummy, two spades in hand, three top diamonds, one more top heart, a top club. That's 9 potential tricks. Of course the
Q will kill one of them but we want to keep it from killing two of them as would happen if the person holding it got in with a club and played the
Q, killing one
in the dummy and one in hand. As long as we play the cards in the correct order, the
Q will be able to kill only one of the potential tricks. We don't care which one.
At our table, after the
was ducked there was a switch to a
. This is the best defense sine now if the opponents can get in before we pitch the
they can set the contract. But as the cards lie this cannot happens, so making 4.
To repeat the point: In the first example it is likely that the hand will make, we just need one finesse out of two to work, but we take precautions against the possibility both finesses fail. In the second example the hand is far from certain to make, we certainly need the trumps to be 3-2, and then we need to take care.
Only rarely can we claim our contract after the opening lead. We often can see how to make it, under some assumptions. My thinking is that beyond the individual hands it is useful to look at recurring themes.Playing on an assumption is an important theme.
