It is not often that you deal a hand straight out of the textbook, but this deal came up at Dorchester this week
It's a decent enough slam, but our opponents were the only pair to bid it after South opened with a slight overbid of 2 clubs. You can follow the correct line of play by clicking 'Next'. The crucial point of the hand comes after drawing trumps, when you should play three rounds of spades ending in hand.
West is guarding spades and East is guarding clubs so you have a classic double squeeze, and the contract is cold regardless of the position of the queen of diamonds. But if you play spades instinctively by playing the king, queen and ace, you are stuck in dummy and playing a diamond to hand will break up the entries for the squeeze.
As the cards lie, the same squeeze operates if you cash the king and queen of spades and then run the trumps, but the spade position is not clear and you may go wrong by discarding a winning spade from dummy when the spades were breaking 3-3.
At the table declarer preferred to take a mundane diamond finesse, but her luck was in and we ended with a bottom on the board.
It's a decent enough slam, but our opponents were the only pair to bid it after South opened with a slight overbid of 2 clubs. You can follow the correct line of play by clicking 'Next'. The crucial point of the hand comes after drawing trumps, when you should play three rounds of spades ending in hand.
West is guarding spades and East is guarding clubs so you have a classic double squeeze, and the contract is cold regardless of the position of the queen of diamonds. But if you play spades instinctively by playing the king, queen and ace, you are stuck in dummy and playing a diamond to hand will break up the entries for the squeeze.
As the cards lie, the same squeeze operates if you cash the king and queen of spades and then run the trumps, but the spade position is not clear and you may go wrong by discarding a winning spade from dummy when the spades were breaking 3-3.
At the table declarer preferred to take a mundane diamond finesse, but her luck was in and we ended with a bottom on the board.
