A Textbook Hand

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.

Senior Moments

Against my better judgement I was persuaded to have a go at the Senior Pairs at Brighton. The second day was a game of two halves. In the semi-final we made a few mistakes and apparently normal results always seemed to give us a poor score, so we were consigned to the Also Rans Final. Then it was the other way round - we made fewer errors, luck was on our side, the opponents were often in a generous mood and we managed to win.

My partner is well known for her rose-tinted spectacles, so I normally bid rather conservatively to compensate. It is not usually a good plan for both partners to overbid on the same hand, but when your luck is in...



My partner did not think much of my opening bid, although it does conform to the rule of 19 and the Losing Trick Count. Ann's 2NT showed a good four-card raise in hearts (a fit-jump of Three Diamonds might have been more descriptive) and Four Spades was a Sharples game-try (you bid it and then try to make it). No worries. When the trumps broke the contract was secure and even though I mis-guessed the diamonds to make only ten tricks we still got a huge score for bidding game.

This was another hand where we were a bit fortunate. East might (should?) have bid Four Spades over the double but he fancied his chances in defence against Four Hearts.

I could have bid 3NT over the double and taken ten top tricks, but the play in Four Hearts was more interesting. East must have been quite confident when dummy went down with the top heart honours, but he was soon to be disappointed. Even after the 5-0 break is revealed, the contract is cold provided that East has at least two diamonds, as a simple elimination leads to East being endplayed. Click on 'Next' to follow the play.



At this point East could choose his poison. If he leads the spade I ruff in hand and play a diamond, forcing East to ruff and lead a trump into the KJ. Alternatively, if he leads a trump I can cash the other trump and play a diamond winner. At the table East chose to play a trump, which at least gave him the small satisfaction of only being endplayed once rather than twice.

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