One in Three

It's a long time since I have posted anything, but here are three interesting declarer play problems that came up in the last few months. Unfortunately I only got one right. First, from a Faulkner match against Jeremy Baker's team, where we gave the opponents a 35 imp start but somehow managed to win.

West led a heart which I won in hand and played a trump to get the bad news. I went up with the ace and tried a cross-ruff, but East was able to ruff the third round of hearts with the ten and draw two more rounds of trumps to defeat the contract.

I should have played the nine (or jack) on the first round of trumps. Say East returns a heart. I overtake the queen to win in dummy, ruff a heart in hand and cash the top clubs. Now king and ace of diamonds and ruff a diamond. That's eight tricks, and East has only trumps left, so it is easy to endplay him to make dummys AJ of trumps. This line works whenever East has a 5332 shape, and some of the time when he is 5422.

A few days later, another match in the Hubert Phillips plate, and I was again declaring a major suit game holding four small trumps, when 3NT would have been an easier proposition.

West led a heart to the king and ace, and East switched to the eight of clubs. I tried the queen but West won this and played another trump. Considering the heart suit in isolation, the odds favour a finesse of the ten, but a trump lead from Jxx is dangerous so I suspected that East held the jack.

I went up with the queen, cashed the ace of clubs and ruffed a club, then played off the diamond winners. East ruffed the fouth round and led a spade, and when the nine drew West's king I was home.

This was another hand where I went wrong, completely missing a simple point that seems obvious in retrospect.

2NT in the protective position showed 18-20 balanced, 3♣ asked about majors, 3♦ showed at least one 4-card major, and 4♦ asked me to bid it.

West kicked off with ace and another club. I led a low trump up, and West won to play a third round of clubs, ruffed and over-ruffed. East now played a diamond.

I need to find the queen of diamonds. If I play for the drop, the chance of a singleton or doubleton queen is about 18%. I realised that East had passed her partner's 1♣ and had already showed up with a queen, but there was still room for her to hold the queen of diamonds, so I thought that the finesse was a better chance.

Wrong! The point that I missed was that if East has the queen of diamonds then West must have the queen and jack of hearts (otherwise East would have enough to repond), so the finesse needs three cards to be well placed, about a 12% chance rather than 50%. Another indication is the opening lead - the Ace of clubs is an unattractive lead, especially when I have bid 2NT, suggesting that West has honours in all the other suits.

There is another line of play that I did consider at the table - discard a diamond on the third round of clubs. This would seem to work whenever East has four diamonds, regardless of who has the queen.  But West can thwart this plan by playing a fourth round of clubs, allowing East to discard two hearts.