February Problem
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None Vul |
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7 5
K Q 6 4 ![[W - E]](t.gif)
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Trick |
Lead |
2nd |
3rd |
4th |
West leads the nine of hearts to your 4 
contract. East plays
the jack and you duck. East now
leads the king and you win, West following. Plan the play.
As is our custom,
the free play will go to the correct answer from the RBC member with the fewest
masterpoints. “Correct” is a
relative term; just saying “I lead X,” even if X is the winning play, will
probably not qualify unless nobody else finds the play. You need to furnish some justification
for your play. (On the other hand,
a briefly or poorly stated but correct justification will fully qualify, if I
can figure it out. This is not an
essay contest.) I am the sole
judge of what constitutes “correct.”
Send answers to JohnCTorrey@aol.com.
January Answer
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Both Vul |
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West leads the jack
of clubs to your 3NT contract.
Plan the Play.
This deal was played at Margaret Webb's home on the first day of 2007.
When presented with a contract like this, it is tempting to listen to your inner Eeyore: “Why did I open that silly one notrump? Look at those wasted clubs and those blocked spades! Woe is me!” This attitude produces bad results, starting with the thought, “Well, I'm going down. How can I minimize the damage, and maybe have a chance to make?” You minimize damage by winning the lead in your hand with the ace, unblocking the spades, and then trying to play hearts for one loser. Leading the king wins against a singleton queen in either hand and is twice as good as leading small, which wins only against a singleton ace with West. You will take seven tricks for sure, and nine if your six percent chance comes through. Several responders tried this approach.
I'm not suggesting that Pollyanna is the answer: “Things are bad, but I'm going to go for it. I don't need a Plan B!” How about some realism? Start with how many you are down if you go for it and lose. The opposition will take three or four clubs, two diamonds, and two hearts. Down three or maybe four. Compared to down two, very little different at matchpoints, and even at IMPs not very bad if the other table is plus your way. How much can you improve your chances by taking this risk? Quite a lot, as it happens!
How do you go for it? Win the club in the dummy and lead the jack of hearts. If East has the Q or AQ you will make. (No human East will play the queen from AQ doubleton.) If East has Qx he will cover and you will make five if West wins the ace, and three otherwise. If East has Qxx he should not cover but probably will, and again you will make three or even five. (I gave this defensive problem to a good player; he took a while and decided not to cover, on the ground that the dummy lacked the entries to lead through the queen a second time. But most players would cover.) Zia wrote an article a while back, the point of which was that “if they don’t cover they don’t have it.”
Lance Shull and John Cobb both win in dummy and lead the jack of hearts – but their entries were very different. Lance thought he might make against Qxxx in East, because even that holding would cover. John said he “might as well lead the jack.” He thought he would have a guess if East covered and West played low – whether to advance the 10 (playing East for AQ doubleton), or lead toward the eight after unblocking spades. Lance has the right attitude: he wins the free play.
Further thoughts: Suppose you win the club in dummy and East plays low when you lead the jack of hearts? If he had a lot of problem doing so, he might have the queen, but if he plays an easy, casual spot I think you should play him for Ax: go up with the king and advance the 10, to see if West wants to grab the queen from Qxx. (Don't unblock the spades; that would just help the defense. They're going to lead clubs when they get in, anyway.)
Ethics of thinking: Put yourself in East's place and suppose you hold Qxx of hearts. Declarer wins the lead in dummy and advances the jack of hearts. Most of us would feel a pronounced ethical pressure to play “in tempo,” not betraying that they had a problem. And if you can't think about the problem, you will probably play the queen: that is the instinctive, default play.
The Laws of Duplicate Bridge addresses these issues in Law 73, starting with 73D1: “It is desirable, thought not always required, for players to maintain steady tempo and unvarying manner. ...Inadvertently to vary the tempo...does not in itself constitute a violation of propriety.” In 73F2 we find, “If the Director determines that an innocent player has drawn a false inference from...tempo...of an opponent who has no demonstrable bridge reason for the action, and who could have known at the time that the action could work to his benefit, the Director shall award an adjusted score.” The net of these two laws is that you should not break tempo for no reason; if you break tempo for a real bridge reason, your opponent is allowed to take an inference from this. In most cover/don’t cover situations, you want to play in tempo because hesitating can give away your holding. In this particular situation you have a real problem, a problem you could not have prepared yourself for while assessing the hand at trick one. You have every right to take as long as you require to work it out. Your partner will have the unauthorized information that you had a problem and will have to ignore that – but there is nothing unethical in giving your partner that ethical burden. Thinking is legal.
December Problem
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Both Vul |
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West leads the king of clubs to your 4 
contract. Plan
the play.
This problem was held over when no correct answers were received in December. I gave two clues last month, one of which was the full hand diagram. This induced several responders to try winning the third round of clubs, drawing two trumps and then playing diamonds. If East refuses to trump, you throw him in with his trump winner, to lead away from the king of hearts. Apart from the fact that West might not play the third club, this is not as good as the normal line – win the second club, play two high trumps and then diamonds, hoping to discard your club loser before an opponent can trump, or that the one who trumps has no more clubs, or that the defender who wins the third club has the king of hearts..
The winning answers applied the second clue (that Chicago’s Billy would have the right approach). Billy Flynn was the lawyer whose trial strategy was, “Razzle-Dazzle ‘Em!” When you play diamonds in the normal line, play the ace, then low to the king, and then the jack. There is an excellent chance that East will not trump the third diamond; your queen wins and you return to dummy with the ace of hearts, to discard your club while East trumps if he wants to. If the dummy’s diamonds had been AQJx and yours Kxx, you could have done a similar deception: low to the queen, then ace, then low from dummy. If I write a book on bridge, I may have a chapter called How to Play Solid Suits. Terence Reese described this play over fifty years ago.
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Al Bender and John Cobb got this right on the second chance. (Al said that this is a play he would never find at the table – but really it costs nothing and has to be right.) John Cobb wins the free play.