[lamford]

!

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Many of you will have watched this board from the Spingold Final. In both rooms your hand led the jack of hearts, covered and won by partner with the ace, South playing the eight. Partner switches to the ten of spades on which South plays the queen. Plan the defence. If you know the hand, comment, but pretend that you do not know the hand if you can

[rhm]

I do not know the deal, but it seems to be an interesting one.
If the defense has a chance declarer can not hold ♣A and ♦AK or he would have 5 side suit tricks and at least 5 trump tricks.
But for this bidding declarer should have two of the three missing minor suit top honors.

The trump switch is a clear indication that partner is not concerned about dummies hearts. So partner should hold ♥A9xx or ♥A9xxx
An expert would never switch to the ♠T if he held a doubleton, unless his second card is the ♠9. So partner has either the singleton ten (likely) or ♠T9.
If declarer got seven spades and the club ace with either ♦A or ♦K, again there is no defense since declarer has 6 trump tricks plus 4 side tricks.
So if declarer got 7 trumps we must assume partner holds the ♣A for the defense to have a chance.

Obviously West can not duck the trump switch or declarer might ruff a diamond.
Win and return a trump. (If declarer has two clubs there is no urgency to switch to clubs)

If this analysis is correct I am still not sure whether the defense can hold the position should declarer decide to run trumps.
From declarers perspective the contract always makes if the ♣A is onside. So he should assume it is not.
Since he has all side suits under control it costs nothing to run a couple of trumps first.
After ♥A and 6 trumps later, 6 cards remain.

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Dummy keeps ♥Kx and ♣KT and two diamonds.
Partner must keep at least 2 clubs. Otherwise declarer can duck a club.
But he also is in sole control of the hearts, so will have to give up diamonds, which we will have to keep if declarer got ♦AKx.
This means we will have to come down to ♣QJ and ♦Qxx and one other card.

Now if declarer comes to the conclusion that the club ace is offside, he can cash two diamonds to force partner down to ♣Ax and ♥9x.
He plays a heart to the king and ruffs the last heart, which would squeeze us between the minors, a vice squeeze.

However, this is difficult to find at the table and among others the ♣ honors must be precisely divided the way they are for this line to succeed.
If my analysis is correct it is a tough hand. But more for declarer than for the defense.

Rainer Herrmann

[phil_20686]

lamford, on 2015-August-17, 03:53, said:

!

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Many of you will have watched this board from the Spingold Final. In both rooms your hand led the jack of hearts, covered and won by partner with the ace, South playing the eight. Partner switches to the ten of spades on which South plays the queen. Plan the defence. If you know the hand, comment, but pretend that you do not know the hand if you can

What am I worried about on this hand:

(1) Hands where declarer can get a diamond ruff
(2) Hands where we have a slow club trick and a diamond loser is going away on the heart K.
(3) Hands where he needs to hook diamonds twice and we need to restrict his dummy entries.
(4) Hands where there is a club-diamond squeeze, or vice squeeze, and we need to think ahead now to discard smoothly.

Hands in class (3) we can discard. I originally imagined hands like KQJ9xxx xx AJT9 -, but on such a hand we have one too many diamonds and a single diamond finesse is enough (and we have the diamond 9). So I am discarding that idea.

Hands in class (1) Are fairly obvious.

Hands in class (2) are hands like KQJ9xxx x K Axxx, would this be a 4S bid for everyone? In this case we need to win the spade ace and immediately play a diamond. Too rare compared to 1.

Hands in class (4) are hands like KQJ9xxx xx AKJ x In this case, after ace of spades and a spade declarer will play a club to the K. In this case I need to think now about how to signal and discard to make sure that partner returns a low heart and not a diamond or club after a club to the K. And indeed, whether I should split the clubs.(I would play the Q in second position when he plays a club up). The other hands in this class are KQJ9xxx xx AKTx - Here after ace of spade and a spade declarer might try a low club off dummy, and partner could easily fly the ace in this situation. However, Now if he ruffs and plays all his trumps we get double squeezed for 11 tricks. Fairly speculative.

At any rate, it seems to me that Ace and another spade is a pretty clear winner at this stage.

[lamford]

rhm, on 2015-August-17, 05:29, said:

Now if declarer comes to the conclusion that the club ace is offside, he can cash two diamonds to force partner down to ♣Ax and ♥9x.
He plays a heart to the king and ruffs the last heart, which would squeeze us between the minors, a vice squeeze.

However, this is difficult to find at the table and among others the ♣ honors must be precisely divided the way they are for this line to succeed.
If my analysis is correct it is a tough hand. But more for declarer than for the defense.

Rainer Herrmann

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An excellent analysis, Rainer. This is the basic ending. However, the defence also has a chance, in that the vice squeeze requires the specific remaining layout. East should bare the ace of clubs some of the time; and declarer does not know the original heart layout which could be 4-2, 3-3 or 2-4, nor the original diamond layout, in that East could have had the length. There is probably a mixed discarding strategy for both defenders to maximise their expected percentage of successful defences, and I think they must both keep two diamonds as long as possible, so that declarer does not know who has the diamond guard. In practice, world-class declarers gain from reading the position, and the only original defences to beat the contract by force were an initial ace of spades lead or the lead of the queen of clubs and a trump switch. South did have KQJ9xxx xx AKx x.

I do agree with Phil that playing ace and another trump is a clear winner at trick two. It was an even clearer winner at trick one. Partner will duck the first heart now, and there is no vice squeeze. At the table, both Nunes and Versace ducked the spade switch and declarer claimed.