Impress Your Palooka

Your regular partner is busy and you're reduced to playing with a particularly uncouth palooka at the club. At unfavourable vulnerability, you pick up ♠ Q7 ♥ AJT7 ♦ 42 ♣ AKT85 and open 1 ♣ as dealer, with some misgivings about your rebid. Upon hearing 1 ♦ from your palooka partner, you bid the automatic 1 ♥. At your next turn—a crashboombang later—you can only pass the palooka's 7 ♣ “rebid”. Your fears are somewhat allayed when dummy hits the table:

♠ AKT
♥ 5
♦ AK873
♣ Q972

♠ Q7
♥ AJT7
♦ 42
♣ AKT85

Lead: ♠ 5

Your uncouth partner is sure to give it to you unabashedly if you go down. Avoid this sorry fate.

Second, assume your partner bid only 6 ♣. Now how do you take insurance against a volley of abuse?

Pick-a-Double-Squeeze

This interesting hand popped up at the Alumni Club pairs game last sunday.

Playing SAYC, sitting South (hands rotated) you open 2C and LHO bids 2S. You end up in 6C and dummy tables:

LHO leads a top spade and shifts to a trump. You can count 11 tricks off the top. The two best options available to you for the twelfth trick are:

Double Squeeze #1:

If east alone holds the diamond guard, you can run trumps (pitching a spade, a diamond and two hearts), cash DA and DK arriving at this position with the lead in dummy:
West has to hang on to the high spade, and east has to hang on to a diamond honour, so neither can hold three hearts. Cash the AK of hearts and watch the lowly 3 of hearts fetch your twelfth trick.

Double Squeeze #2:

If east holds a five card or longer heart suit, you can pull trumps, cash the ace of diamonds and the top two hearts, and run the trumps (pitching a spade, a diamond and a heart) arriving at this position on the play of the last trump:
West has to hang on to his top spade, so you pitch the SQ. Watch for east's discard. I hope you have been counting the hearts, for either the H3 has to cash, else east still has a heart. In that case, you can cross to the DK and the small diamond has to win.


Which double squeeze to choose? You have seven cards outstanding in either red suit, but the presence of good intermediates in diamonds makes Squeeze #1 look more attractive; it will work when east holds any five card or longer diamond, as well as QJx or QJxx.

If west had shifted to a heart at trick 2, though, you can only play for Squeeze #2.

In reality the actual layout was quite boring. East turned up with BOTH a five card heart suit AND QJxx in diamonds, so not only did either squeeze work, even a simple automatic squeeze on diamonds and hearts is enough to secure the slam.

Worse still, at our table, Guthi settled for a conservative 3NT, so his squeeze skills were not tested; I became declarer and after the opponents cashed their top two spades I claimed. How boring.

Cheers
Prashanth.

Smith Echo for Dummies

I was explaining Smith Echo to Guthi, and figured I might as well put up a post. I don't have too much experience with Smith Echo myself so this is just an introductory, for-dummies level post.

Smith Echo is used in defense against NT contracts. It applies only when your side leads low and the declarer wins the first trick. It allows both defenders to communicate some information (i.e. attitude signal) regarding the led suit. Whatever suit the declarer plays on trick two, both defenders play high-low to encourage the originally led suit or low-high to say he holds nothing extra beyond what has already been played/promised. It is extremely useful when you need to figure out whether to continue the suit or shift when you get in, no matter which defender you are. Let me elucidate with a couple of examples:























Defending 3NT. Partner leads the spade 3, 5, J, K. Declarer plays the DK out of his hand, which you win. What do you do now? If partner started with AQ or AT of spades with five cards, a spade return immediately scuttles the contract. If he started with four cards, you may need to play a spade through declarer and get a heart back for another spade through. But what if partner does not hold the ace at all? Then a shift is in order. How do you know what the situation is? Smith Echo provides the solution. Watch partner's carding on the diamond play. If he echoes, he is indicating that a spade return will do the trick; else you have to try something else. On this hand, he plays the 3 of diamonds to your ace to indicate that he is not interested in spades (he knows you don't have the ace of spades).

Now, can you figure out what is the correct return to break the contract? Think on it...


Yes, the only winning return is the HJ, known as the "surrounding play". If declarer covers, partner wins and sends a heart through dummy's Tx; if he doesn't cover, simply play another low heart.

Remember that both defenders should be signaling in Smith Echo. Let's try a variation of the same hand, in which it is the other defender who gets back in.























You lead the spade 3, 5, J, K. Declarer plays DK out of his hand, which you win and stop to consider. If partner started with QJx of spades, you need to return a spade. Otherwise, you must shift to a low heart and hope to find partner with the king. Again, if you were watching partner's diamond cards, on this hand he would have played low to your DA, and you must switch to a heart. Remember to cash the ace of spades before switching, as you were unable to show the smith echo yourself, so he might place you with ATxxx of spades and try to return a spade through declarer instead of the heart!

There are situations in which both defenders get to show Smith Echo on Trick 2. The information communicated this way may be vital in setting the contract.

Cheers,
Prashanth.

The Obvious Shift Principle

Read about the Obvious Shift Principle for guidelines on signalling in defence. Much damage was caused to IITM bridge by the stupidity of Guthi &c., who decided some two (three?) years back that they would always signal count because it was too difficult to keep track of the different signals. While all of us now recognize—broadly—the types situation in which each kind of signal is warranted, the fundamental meaning of signals still eludes us, in my opinion.

What does an encouragement signify? You don't know? Visit the link to find out. It contains a nice codification of rules.

Who knows?

Guthi pulled out the wrong bidding card on this board. Who knows what would have happened if he didn't?

Guthi opened 2NT, and I straight away wondered whether we belonged in 6NT or 7NT. To bide my time I bid Gerber, intending to check the number of kings as I definitely couldn't bid 7NT with a missing king.

























Alas, Guthi pulled out 5S instead of 4S, and although I suspected what had happened, I couldn't ethically use 5NT or 6C to ask for kings (plus there was a risk of misunderstanding) so I had to pick without that information. I chose the conservative 6NT with five points outstanding.

Guthi cashed his major suit winners, pitching three diamonds and a club from dummy. He then cashed the top two clubs, and no queen appeared. He then played DK and a low D to the Ace, and it turned out that his last diamond was good. East, holding the queen of clubs as well as the third diamond, had been squeezed on the run of the majors! 6NT made 7. At the other table, Aniket and Anurag were in 6D, an inferior contract that will only make 6.

Who knows what would have happened if Guthi had responded 4S and I asked for kings? Would I have bid 7? If I did, would Guthi have played for the squeeze or the finesse? The squeeze I think is a slightly superior percentage; it works whenever the person with the CQ holds more than two diamonds, and also when the person with two or less diamonds holds CQ doubleton. I think this adds up to slightly more than 50%, which is the probability for the finesse. Ashok says it will be slightly less than 50%. Can someone do the math?

Cheers
Prashanth.

(Edit: Switched to the image given by Ashok. Extraneous comment in it was also provided by Ashok :) )