Dubious Logic

For whom the bell rings

I often remark that problems, for example as they appear in newspapers, have an air of the contrived about them that rings a bell for those asked to answer them. At the table, things are different – no bells are rung to alert you. That's not always true; consider this exercise in declarer play:

In the robust Australian school, they say that 7-4 distributions should either be opened at the one level or game. Here, at both vulnerable, four spades is a bit rich for me; true, the spade intermediates are pretty good, but the singleton ace is poor. With ♣ A1075 and two low red cards, I would certainly essay opening four spades. I contented myself with three which was passed out and I received the club ace lead. That gathered the nine from third hand and the leader promptly switched to the knave of diamonds to my ace – take it from there.

I had a simple plan. I would cash two hearts, ruff a red suit back to hand perhaps once or twice (on general principles) and eventually try to ruff my last club with dummy's midget trump. I figured that might either stand up – though suspiciously no-one played a spade at trick two – or perhaps someone would ruff from a holding that would make my life easier, say, singleton or doubleton honour or ♠A9 or ♠K9. I was, of course, worried that North, who produced the diamond knave with the ten in dummy, was short there and had a few trumps – there was the danger the spade nine would increase my trump losers to three in addition to two clubs.

When the club queen fell I gave up my plan of ruffing red cards in hand – North had five clubs, two diamonds I guessed, and was likely short in hearts. In retrospect I consider that mistaken. I could do little about long trumps over me except ruff low in hand and shorten my own trumps; tricks lost to over-ruffs were destined to be lost anyway. I couldn't make the contract from here but South erred by not holding up a trump honour and I only lost two spades after all. Consider the better play of ruffing a heart and a diamond:

Having taken all the tricks except the first and with the lead in West, declarer can try the club ruff and when that is over ruffed, on the heart return he is safe if he ruffs low. That seems more difficult than playing low on a trump lead from South but is, in effect, the same. Of course, ruffing two diamonds earlier would make things easier but North's unusual diamond play makes this less likely. Now all this would have been much easier had someone rang a bell and doubled. +530 for making three spades doubled was quite common. The defence can defeat this by force; the club ace is a good lead but North must play another at trick two. This takes away an entry for ruffs in hand before the diamond ace is unblocked and declarer cannot shorten his trumps sufficiently even if the bell has been sounded.

Published Saturday 25.Jun.2005