Trying to Lose

In our fourth round Silver Plate match against a team from Devon, both sides seemed to be doing their best to avoid progressing into the next round, but we managed to squeak home by 5 imps. At our table the opponents started by playing a laydown Six Clubs in an equally laydown 3NT. Dummy compounded the error by putting the clubs down on his right, so that declarer forgot the contract and fell foul of Burn's Third Law - 'you cannot make 3NT on a cross-ruff' - to go three down.

This was an interesting declarer play problem - how do you play after the king of spades lead, East following with the four?



In our room North bid a rose-tinted Four Hearts at his second turn, which encouraged his parther to bid a hopeless slam. When I played briefly with Mike Pownall, he taught me a rule for supporting partner after intervention - you should allow yourself to be pushed one level higher than normal but not two levels. On this hand North would have rebid Two Hearts if West had passed. So he can bid Three Hearts over a Two Spade overcall, but should pass after a Three Spade overcall.

Back to earth in Four Hearts. If trumps are 3-2, the contract is a simple make by drawing two rounds of trumps and ruffing spades in dummy, but this will fail if trumps are 4-1, which is of course much more likely than normal when the missing spades are known to be 7-1. According to my unreliable arithmetic, the chance of East having four trumps is 35%, and a 3-2 break is still the favourite at 54%.

At the table Chris was worried about a possible bad trump break and started with ace and another diamond, but West held a doubleton diamond and the defenders were able to cross ruff in diamonds and spades for one down. I think a better line is to cash the ace of trumps and then lead a low diamond from hand, covering West's card. Win the return, unblock the ace of diamonds and cross to the king of trumps. If trumps are 3-2 you are home, but if East has four trumps you ruff a diamond, cross to a top club, ruff another diamond and continue clubs, making if the clubs are 3-3. Of course you will look silly if West started with a singleton diamond, but this is much less likely than a singleton trump.

This was the full deal