Help
Playing with an unfamiliar partner, who bid on me in a charity auction, you have few agreements, and lebensohl is not one of them, resulting what is for me a very rare auction. 2H was alerted and explained as both majors.
West led the spade Queen and the play of the 8 by East told me that West had AQJ10 in spades.
There seemed no point in ducking….while I can probably endplay west at some point, there’s no guarantee and it’d be silly not to take any spade tricks.
Ok…1 spade and presumably 3 hearts…playing west for the Queen. The minor aces get us to 6 tricks and we have chances in both minors.
I chose the heart 10, hoping to sneak it by west….if he ducked, I’d exit in spades and await developments. But he covered. So I’m in dummy…..however, as the diagram shows (obviously I didn’t know the distribution at that point), East pitched. He discarded the club 3, which showed interest in diamonds.
Now I know west is 4=6 majors. Trusting East to be an honest player and with no other option in diamonds anyway, I played a diamond to the queen. West pitched a small club. Wow…east was known to be 0=1=8=4 with KJ109xxxx in diamonds. It’s not often one sees a hand with that much shape that takes no call.
At this point, we have several equivalent routes and three not so equivalent.
We could play on clubs…either low to the 10 or low to the ace and back towards our Q or run the Queen.
The pitch of a low club suggests that west doesn’t have the club King. It makes little sense for him to pitch down to Kx with the A10x in dummy. Otoh, East might have bid over 2N with his actual hand, especially if his clubs were KJxx.
I figured that as long as east has one club honour I can reduce to a club guess in an end position with east on lead, plus if he does have KJxx, he’s dead.
But obviously one needs to make him pitch diamonds. One can do this in two ways…..take the two heart winners we have, forcing at least one diamond pitch, and then exit in diamonds. East can cash 5 winners! But then must lead clubs.
Or one could exit spades…forcing pitches that way.
I chose to exit spades, because there was a remote chance that west might panic and lead clubs…after all, he knows I’m 4=3 majors and it’s hard to picture his partner with 8 diamonds, so he might play me for 4=3=4=2….I’m not saying doing so suggests a club switch but club level players don’t always defend logically.
West won the spade and sensibly didn’t cash the suit..he played a heart. I returned a spade and he again didn’t cash his spade winner..returning another heart. I couldn’t play my last spade since his hearts are now good and he’d get three tricks in each major.so I cashed the diamond ace and exited a diamond.
Would I have got it right had west pitched his hearts, as he should? I don’t know…fortunately for me west pitched the club Jack. I have no idea why he thought that was a good idea, but I have pointed out that club players don’t always defend logically.
So….I tried to give West three spade tricks but he got only 2. East never bid with his hand.
Hands where success came down, at the table, to an opp making a bad play aren’t that interesting, but freaks like this can be. Plus I think I’d have got clubs right, partly because East has 4 clubs to West’s 3 and partly because of west’s first pitch being a club.