Dubious Logic

Zia and Me

I misdefended a hand once. No seriously. It preyed on my mind and I was careful to analyse where I'd gone wrong. But there was more to it than that; there was a faint echo from the past about it. Had I committed the same error before? Most likely. But when I got a grip on the foggy memory, I realised that I was declarer and the beneficiary of the defensive slip. Moreover it was Zia defending, years ago, the hand records now almost yellow. Here are the two problems, take a moment to decide what you'd do as West in both,

You lead the ♦10 and this goes low, knave from partner, king from declarer. South now plays the club queen, king, ace, five, then low back to his knave, partner discarding an encouraging heart. Next a spade towards table – do you win this, and if so what do you play next?

You naturally lead your partner's suit and declarer wins the king over the knave. He next leads a low heart towards table. It's the same QJx – do you win or not?

Answers

A) What's going on? It looks if East has ♦Jx - it's quite possible declarer is indeed 3=3=5=2. Partner's encouraging heart surely means he has the king. If this is the case what's wrong with rising and switching to a heart? Otherwise will not declarer clear the clubs and embarrass you when he cashes them? What good can come of ducking anyway? To see the effect, let's look at the whole hand after a duck…

You've yet to take a trick, South has four but the position is not good for him. If he does clear clubs you'll play a heart and threaten to take two diamonds and one in each of the three other suits. There is no squeeze; you can pitch a spade and a diamond. South's alternative is to play a spade but now you can win and play your heart. Declarer may duck this and he has nine tricks in view (three clubs, a diamond, two hearts and three spades) but the lack of communication undoes him. Partner will play a diamond through and after scoring your nine, you'll exit with a spade. Down to one of that suit in dummy together with the stiff heart ace, whichever hand he wins this in, South will have to abandon the queen of hearts in hand.

Compare that to the diagram above but where West is on lead having won the first spade, a trick to the good but now declarer has the transportation. Your heart lead puts partner in for one diamond lead through but you can't take five tricks and South has nine. Why was partner so profligate with the ♦J? It was a practice session and he thought we were playing 'tens and nines, zero or two higher'; it was an attempt to stop declarer fooling when you had led from AK109.

B) Over to the Guardian Swiss Teams 1987, last round. We haven't lost a match but we've not scored well and we are on about table five. This is not where Zia wants to be and he has (maybe always has) a cognac in hand, sitting opposite is author and rubber bridge pro David Greenwood. Stuart McPhee is North. The play isn't very old, so let's look at the complete diagram.

On my lead of a small heart Zia flew king. I now had nine tricks. His argument was (effectively) that had the aces of clubs and hearts been switched, rising ♥K was essential. But he was wrong – not only on the lie but with his alternative, his partner would have cleared the spades and had the heart ace as entry but… I would have run my diamonds, taking a club finesse en route: the alternative layout would look like this,

On the lead of the ♦K what can East discard? Back to the actual hand, the alternative of course was to duck at trick two. It's true that declarer can repeat the lead toward the heart minor honours but at what cost? As dummy's diamonds are so strong and West can see the ♦10, there's no second entry back to hand. Winning on the second round will again strand a heart winner. We gained IMPs on this deal but lost the match by one.

What does this tell us? Ducking is the natural play in defence? Yes. It's more forgivable to miss that declarer has a squeeze than it is to think that a few discards will be more difficult than they actually are? Yes. Even Homer nods? Sure. It's a bit sad to save hand records for sixteen years…?