Dubious Logic

4th Time Around

I expect you think knocking out an article a week for the East Anglian Daily Times is pretty easy. But anyone who has seen me frantically scouring the boards at Ipswich for the curtain cards will know the sacrifices involved – especially if they're waiting to go to the pub.

Not any deal will do: space limitations mean complications, requiring extra diagrams are out. Every now and again I start writing only to discover interesting digressions. For the newspaper I have to leave them out and this example, from an Ipswich and Kesgrave club night, was one such:

My partner, Joan Mayhew, opened an aggressive 3♦ pre-empt (even with a weak 2♦ available - though I might have forgotten our system) and West's 3♠ overcall closed proceedings.

I gave this as a play problem from West's point of view. In three spades I argued, West should foresee the danger of the trump promotion that actually occurred. I led the ♦4 to the 7, 10 and ace. Declarer crossed to the club ace to run the trump knave. I won, led another diamond and Joan played a third round, ruffed by West with the nine of spades and over-ruffed by me. I still had a spade with which to get off lead and declarer lost a couple more heart tricks to finish down one.

Clearly Joan had won the board for our side with her opening salvo but I allowed myself a small congratulatory pat that I hadn't tried to get off lead after the over-ruff with the club king, despite declarer having no entry to dummy.

The first revision of this came in The Bell after the game. No, I said, you can get away with the club king as an exit. After all West has three small hearts; one discard on the club queen, assuming she can get a taxi to dummy, won't help her.

We discovered that almost every other East-West had made game. I suspect that after South's pass, North overcalled a one spade opening with two clubs. Even after a diamond lead, West had no difficulty in finessing the club queen to avoid a diamond loser and the promotion. Incidentally, what do you think of East's pass after their partner's three spade overcall? Very faint-hearted of them, I think - though, of course, events only served to reinforce their conservative tendencies – put me down for 3NT every time.

So, the second time I looked at the layout, for the newspaper piece, I was preparing to draw attention to North's lack of problem at trick four when something struck me. Let's say I had tried to cash the club king when in with the over-ruff. West ruffs this and for want of anything to do, runs her trumps:

['West: NS 2: EW 4' above means West is on lead and then the number of tricks each side needs – it should sum to one more than the number of cards.]

West plays the last spade, what can North discard? If a heart then ducking a heart leaves the West hand with three more winners. So a club then: East lets go a heart from dummy and West plays toward the knave. North has to rise with an honour else there are three winners in dummy. And on the next trick I would have the same problem; unable to play a low heart I would have to continue with the other top card. That would crush East's knave but do the same to partner's ten spot – all West's hearts would be high.

So a top club would have been wrong but it wasn't tempting in any case. However, the end position is neat, it is a example of what Kelsey and Ottlik call Lunar Menaces and exemplifies the rule that whilst it's OK to plan a line of play that requires one taxi to dummy but it's imprudent to count on two.

I left this out of the EADT article of course – too obscure and requiring an extra diagram – but I thought I'd mention it to bridge cronies. As I considered setting the scene a thought struck me. West could force this position! My third appraisal was this: rather than ruff South's third round of spades with the nine (though possibly best play taken in isolation), what if West had ruffed ♠Q? I would have discarded and West would have tried to drop the trump ten with her remaining top spade. When that failed she'd play another and I would have found myself in this situation:

A heart makes thing easy of course and the club king gets us to diagram (2). So West could have made 3♠ after all…

No! There's only one possibility left so it's not much of a problem but at the table I can imagine it to be almost insoluble.

My fourth re-evaluation was that even here the defence prevails; North must lead the club knave or ten. True, West will gain a trick and an entry but it is no good to her. The lack of a stranded winner in dummy removes the threat and when North wins a heart, he'll have a winning clubs to play and can afford to come down to the heart KQ doubleton as the last trump is played.

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