Shirley the Kibitzer – October 2004
The Kibitzer is Shirley Wright
October 25, 2004
Gainesville Bridge Club
Shirley:
Here is what happened on Board 10, October 25, at the Gainesville Bridge Club at the table I watched.
I have rotated the hands to make South the declarer. See if you can find all of the errors made, and recommend how the best play and defense would proceed against the final contract of 4H.
Both Vul, North deals.
North
S-Ax
H-KJx
D-xx
C-AK1098x
West East
S-J9xx S-Kx
H-x H-1098xx
D-J8xx D-A10xxx
C-xxxx C-Q
South
S-Q108xx
H-AQxx
D-KQ
C-Jx
The bidding:
West North East South
- 1C P 1S
P 3C P 3H
P 4H P P
P
The play proceeded as follows. West led a Diamond to the Ace and a Diamond was returned to South’s K.
Declarer played the HK and HJ, getting the bad news of a 5-1 trump split. Declarer returned to hand with a third trump and ran the CJ to the East’s Q. East played Diamonds, South ruffing with South’s last trump. Down to only Spades, South had to lead a Spade to the Ace, and after that, East made the rest for down 3.
Bidding Analysis:
(1)North might well have opened the hand with 1NT instead of 1C. Fault North with a small error.
(2) South’s bid of 3H was an error. North’s jump to 3C denies a 4 card Heart suit. With 6C and 4H,along with 16+ points including distribution, North reverses into 2H to show 5+ Clubs and 4 Hearts. South’s proper call is (a) if you are playing new minor forcing, 3D to see if North has 3 card Spade support; or (b). if you do not play new minor forcing, 3NT. You are not quite in the slam zone with no fit and a combined 30 or so points.
Note that North expects South to be 5-5 in the majors, and lacking a Diamond stopper, correctly raised 3H to 4H.
But truth be told, despite flawed bidding, looking at the NS cards, 4H is a safer contract than 3NT, though problematic with the actual horrible Heart break.
Play analysis: (Cards will help see all this!)
The defense started beautifully by playing two rounds of Diamonds. Let us look at just the NS hands for a moment. The normal contract will be 3NT, and whether South opens 1NT or 1C, the bidding will scream for a Diamond lead. If the CQ is onside, 3NT will make 6, while if the CQ is offside, 3NT will go down at least one. Note that in 3NT, the proper play in Clubs is to run the J, even though on this day, playing the
Ace first is a winner. The only 4-1 split the A wins in is the Q singleton, while running the J wins on all of the other singletons (4:1 odds).
Error #1: The plan of the hand should be to hope for no worse than a 4-2 Heart split and play as safely as possible. At trick 3, run the CJ to East’s CQ. You should doubt that West has a singleton Club absent a Club lead, so this is a safe finesse. If the finesses wins, you plan to draw trump and score a poor board for 4H+2=680 as the field will score 3NT+3 +690. Once the Club loses, you will make five against a 4-2 Heart break unless East exits in Diamonds (sluff from hand, ruff in dummy) where you make only four (five if Hearts are 3-3). (Playing Clubs from the top early works on this hand, but you can easily go down when East has Qxx of Clubs, as your only entry post trump is the SA, and you cant afford to ruff the third round of Clubs. When in with the Club, the defense might kill that entry, and then you only make the hand on a 3-3 Heart break.
Error #2: After declarer won the second Diamond and cashed the KJ of Hearts finding out the bad news, the plays of the third Heart and running the CJ to the Q (giving up total control of the hand) caused the disaster, directly leading to the multi trick set. It the CQ is onside, you are not getting any matchpoints anyway. So you might as well play to drop the CQ while a trump is still on the board to protect you against a Diamond return.
So here is the situation at the start of trick5 with North (dummy) to lead:
North
S-Ax
H-x
D-
C-AK1098x
West East
S-J9xx S-Kx
H- H-1098
D-J8 D-10xx
C-xxx C-Q
South
S-Q108xx
H-AQ
D-
C-Jx
Laying out cards can help you see all of this:
The correct play at this point is the CA (and continue playing top Clubs until East ruffs). Note that whenever East decides to ruff if after the second round, South will pitch a Spade. (a) If East ruffs a Club and returns a Diamond, ruff in dummy and continue playing Clubs until East ruffs. This time you overruff, pull East’s last trump (pitching a Spade from dummy), cross to the Spade A, and claim (making 5: 4C, 1D, 1D ruff, 4H,1S ). (b) If a low Spade is returned from East, play the Q to preserve the entry to dummy, pull trump, cross to the SA,again making 5. (c) Most interesting is the brilliant SK from East (a Deschapelle Coup). The hand cannot make against this brilliant play. You hope Spades are 3-3 (best shot), and play the SA, SQ, and ruff a Spade. East overruffs and plays a Diamond which you can ruff with your second to last trump, but since East has another trump too, you can only make one more trick whatever you do. (Down 2).
Summary: The 5-1 Heart split dooms the 4H contract , but on the actual play of tricks 1-4, declarer’s errors were actually making it very hard to set 5H on normal splits, until the third trump was played.
Lessons: When in a 4-3 fit, think of it as an opportunity to shine. The odds of a 3-3 split is only 36%, and 4-2 (50%). A 5-1 or 6-0 split is rare (just 14%). Try to set up a long suit early, and if you have to ruff, ruff in the short hand (which starts with 3 trump). Take care of your entries. As a defender, try to attack dummy’s entries when dummy has a long, dangerous side suit. Another approach to 4-3 fits is to cash side winners and cross-ruff. As a defender, if you see the opponents working on a crossruff, pull their trump.
Lesson: Don’t panic when you get into what looks like a poor contract. Look upon it as an opportunity to do something special.
As an extreme example, I watched two players have a bidding misunderstanding in an IMP game and wound up playing 5S with
Dummy: S-J109 Declarer AK.
The opening leader had S-Qxx and his partner held S-xxxxx.
Declarer, at the close of the bidding foolishly scolded his partner for passing a cue bid. The opening leader failed to seize the opportunity to lead a trump. Believe it or not, declarer won six side tricks ruffed the seventh in dummy, eighth in hand, ninth in dummy, tenth in hand, and at trick 11, the opening leader held Qxx of Spades, dummy the singleton J, and the other defender (who had already underruffed twice), held xxx. So on a plain card led, the J of Spades became declarer’s eleventh trick. At the other table the players also missed the ice cold 6NT, and played 3NT+3 for +690 against 5S +650, and one IMP. The 32 board match was settled by an eight IMP margin. The result would have gone the other way on a trump lead. So if someone can make 5S with a 3-2 fit, you should not complain of playing in a 4-3 fit. It is just part of the fun of playing bridge.