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!