Defense - A cooperative effort
This hand was played yesterday (Sep 30th 2024), in a Pavlicek match. It caught my eye.
Check out the Interactive Kibitzing Session recorded last week. And the Bridge Lottery is still on! I will report soon on the game with the September winner.
With everyone vulnerable, you are East and pick up a weak three-suited hand:
4 / J753 / K863 / A1063
Partner (Ira Chorush) opened with 1♦️ and Jim Munday overcalled 1♠️ on my right. I have a clear negative double, no problems on this bidding so far. Richard Pavlicek raised his partner to 2♠️, and Ira bid 3♥️. After RHO bid 3♠️, I have the first real decision to make in the bidding.
We have a nice double fit in diamonds and hearts, but my hand is on the weak side, my trumps are very bad, and three-suited hands usually don’t play very well. (That is a tip, by the way — if you have a three-suited hand and are in doubt about whether to declare or defend, it is usually best to defend. In effect, 4441s are very much like balanced hands in this respect).
So, I passed, and this ended the auction:
Now I had to find an opening lead. My bad hearts led me to think of leading partner’s suit instead of our raised suit. So I picked the ♦️6 (we lead 3rd best against suit contracts), and saw this dummy (Note that our diagrams are usually with South in the driving seat, but I was East, so it will look a bit different here; South is the dummy):
Your first reaction to this dummy should be something like “Whoa! That is a mighty powerful dummy for a 2♠️ raise!” The high cards are expected but the 3406 shape is very powerful.
Your second reaction should be “Hmm, looks like a diamond lead was quite bad". Declarer should have many diamonds and we may have given him a big help (picture him with something like AJ109 to see how costly this lead might be).
Both of these thoughts crossed my mind. (Bridge is fueled by emotions too!). But the third reaction is to do what you should always be doing, trying to estimate the unseen hands. Partner has 4 hearts and it looks like we need him to have 4 spades as well, otherwise we have very slim chances of beating this. This means that partner’s shape is one of these three: 4432, 4441, 4450.
We have two tricks: a presumed heart and our club Ace. We may hope for a trump trick with partner, just because we need to hope for something, and that is still a bit far from our goal of five tricks.
While we are doing all this work, declarer discards a club from dummy, and partner wins the trick with the ♦️A. This means that declarer is intending to establish some diamond tricks (if he had a feeble diamond holding such as Q9xxx he would never refrain from ruffing here).
Now partner stops to consider the hand, and so should we.
Declarer line will apparently be something like “establish diamonds and draw trumps” in some yet-to-be determined order. One way to thwart that would be to shorten him. He has five trumps (by hypothesis) and partner has four. So if we could make declarer ruff twice, he would not be able to cash all of his diamond tricks.
The problem is that the heart holding in dummy is too powerful. We can’t break this hand by force. Maybe guile will do it.
Partner cashes the ♥️A. Yes! If we could convince declarer that I have the heart King, he will not let the next heart run to the Queen (He could be quickly down if he did, especially if partner is 4441 and ruffs a club). So I have to encourage with the 3. (Partner knows all my hearts so there is no deceiving partner here). Declarer followed suit with the Ten as I played the ♥️3, and Ira dutifully played a low heart, as declarer ruffed.
He continued with the Queen of diamonds from his hand. I covered, dummy ruffed, and played Ace of spades, and a spade to the Jack. Small pause from declarer (good news — looks like partner has the spade Queen, guarded). Now he cashes two more diamonds, as everybody follows suit (confirming that partner was originally 4441. If declarer tries the 5th diamond now (his hand was 5152), partner will ruff, play a club to my Ace, and get a club ruff. So declarer instead tries to develop his club trick first by playing the ♣️K.
I win the Ace and cannot give partner that club ruff (it will be the defense’s last trick: one in each suit, not enough). No, I have to continue the good work that partner started and play a low heart. Jackpot! Declarer is still under the spell of the early heart play and tries dummy’s Queen, as partner covers with the King. Declarer ruffs and finally partner has more trumps than declarer, as we intended all along.
The hand is over as declarer can only win one more trick in this ending:
Declarer might and probably should have got the ending right if he had reasoned that I would probably have bid an automatic 4♥️ if I had x Kxxx Kxxx A10xx (both my shape and the diamond and club honors had been revealed at the decisive point), but that does not detract from our beautiful effort. One down.