Amazing Deal

Declarer play is completely about planning and execution. By execution, i mean which card to play at which trick (order of play). We all sense the importance of planning because it is required in each and every deal but the execution part is not required in every deal. This deal shows the importance of execution part.
I was kibitzing this deal on BBO.

South is declarer

x x x x
x
Q 9 8 7 x
A x x

K x
A Q x x x x
A 10 x x
x

East is dealer

opens precision 1D

Bidding :
1D-1H-x-P
1S-2D-2S-4D
P-5D-x-ALL PASS

West doubled 5D

Lead was !S by West

small spade and E took it with Ace

and returned a !D, now plan the play
by yourself before seeing the solution.

Assume West to be having K J x of Diamonds for his double.
Losers: Spade Ace, Diamond King. You need to ruff 4 losers from dummy, but if u ruff 4 losers, you have to give two Diamonds losers to K and J. So, this is not a feasible line. The alternative line is dummy reversal in which u need to set up Hearts. Playing for !H to be 4-2 is much better option because East opened precision 1D and is most likely known to have a singleton in Diamonds. So shape of his hand is 4-4-4-1. You can ruff at most one two hearts in dummy due to communication problem, so best line is to finnese in Hearts. So, duck the Diamond, West takes it with Diamond K and returns a !S. Take it with King and play a club to Ace, Heart finnese, then Ace and ruff a Heart. Now play Diamond to the Ace, ruff another Heart, draw the last trump and enter the hand in Diamonds and cash ur Hearts to make the contract.
Here planning was very important. You could also ruff a club instead of playing Diamond to the Ace, ruff a Heart, then draw trumps by first playing Diamond Queen and then Ace ending in hand and cash ur Hearts.

Now lets see the scenario of a Club lead (the best for defence). Lets see what happens if we follow the same line of play. Take Club Ace. Heart finnese and cash Heart Ace. Now ruff a Heart. Low Spade to the King , but East will go up with Ace and return a low club which u have to ruff in hand. Ruff another Heart. Current Position is:

x x
-
Q 9 x (Dummy)
x


K
x x
A 10 x (Hand)
-


U r in dummy now and cant cash your Hearts. When declarer ruffed two Hearts, West discarded his two Spades and he is now void in Spades. Try to enter hand with D Ace. Now u can cash ur Hearts and West is unable to ruff, if he ruffs dummy will overruff. But this line fails if West started with K x in Diamonds and East with J x in Diamonds because East will ruff when u play Hearts.
Instead of playing spade after first heart ruff, if declarer tries for second Heart ruff by going to hand via Club ruff, then he will always be down because he will be short-trumped and wont be able to enjoy his Hearts.

Alternative line of play is :
After taking Club Ace, take Heart finnese, cash the Heart Ace, ruff one Heart and play a Spade.
Suppose East takes Spade Ace and returns a club, ruff it in hand. Now don't ruff one more Heart (the reason will be given later). Play low Diamond to Queen.
Various Scenarios:
1) Suppose West ducks Diamond King, then take it with Queen and return to hand with Diamond Ace.
Now u can cash Hearts. When he ruffs with master trump, u have still 2 more entries to cash the Heart.
2)Suppose West goes up with Diamond King, and returns a Club, ruff it in hand cash Diamond Ace. Now there is one more Diamond outside and two more in dummy.
Now can u see why not ruff the second Heart earlier? So that, u can enter the dummy by ruffing second Heart and draw the last trump. Now enter hand with Spade King and cash your Hearts.

The most important thing in this hand was delaying the second Heart ruff to make the contract cold.
This hand shows why u should not neglect the execution part of dummy play.

Squeezing the Dummy

Squeeze plays are fun.

But why should declarers have all the fun?

I have read about defenders squeezing the dummy (easier to do than squeezing the declarer, as you can see all the cards!), for example this NYTimes article and this post by the Korbels. But for once, I was in the middle of it. Well, nearly all the current readers of this blog were, but I'm putting this up for posterity's sake anyway :)


After a modern preempt by Prajwal and a balancing double by Guthi, we ended up defending 3CX and I led a low heart. Guthi won and shifted to a trump. Prajwal inserted the jack, I won and returned my lone spade.

Prajwal read me for a three carder spade and hoped to pull trumps and cash the (hypothetical) thirteenth spade in his hand, so he won and played two rounds of trumps, leaving me with the master trump and then exited with a spade. Guthi won as I signaled a diamond, and as he cashed two more spades I sat back and waited for the diamond through for -3.

But wait! Guthi played his fifth spade instead of the diamond, landing me in trouble. If I overruffed this one, I would be endplayed for sure at this position:

I would have a choice of underleading the HK or the DK, both options leading to the loss of a trick. So, with the instinct of seeing a punch being aimed at my face, I ducked and threw a heart. Dummy naturally threw a heart as well.

Now Prajwal led a trump to endplay me but ran into a little snag: what could he discard from dummy? If he threw a heart, I could safely exit with my HK. If he threw a diamond, I could exit with a low diamond. Dummy was squeezed!

He saw it an instant before I did, and drew the unhappy face in the chat window to collect -3.

Cheers!
SP.

P.S. Read the two squeezing-the-dummy articles I linked above, they are quite entertaining!

Think Ahead!

I was playing a team match on BBO when the following hand came up:

2D: Strange idea of a vulnerable weak 2, even for a 3rd hand opening
3H: Transfer
4S: I expect partner to have some points on this bidding, and I have a great hand in support of spades.

A club lead and a club continuation on winning the spade ace easily beats the contract, but the lead at my table was the spade ace followed by the spade jack.

What you should be thinking as declarer:
We appear to be a trick short. The only hope seems to be to eliminate the diamonds and throw an opp in with the third heart, hoping that whoever wins has to underlead the CA or give a ruff-sluff.

What you should be thinking as defender:
If I win the third heart I am going to be endplayed... unblock! unblock!

Declarer has to make it as hard as possible for the defender to find the unblock. When playing the hearts, play low to the Ace first and then low to the King. Since defender doesn't know what's in the closed hand, it may not occur to him to play second hand high to unblock. It's all too easy for him to figure it out if you play King then Ace of hearts.

Is that all? No, there is something else you can do. Play the top hearts first (in the mentioned order) before eliminating the diamonds! Not so easy for the defender to see what's coming at trick 4 itself. A decent defender will think 2-3 tricks in advance, but it takes a pretty good defender to think several tricks ahead.

For the record, I eliminated the diamonds, cashed Ace then King of hearts and the defender forgot to unblock his HQ. Game made. Funnily enough, game was made at the other table as well, with a similar lack of unblock (on a different auction and a diamond lead). Both guilty defenders called themselves experts.

Cheers,
SP.