Hilo Bridge Club Updates
From a recent hand on BBO: You are South in four spades. West leads the queen of clubs. Here is your hand and dummy:
It looks like you will make at least five spades. But you are playing a pairs game (which means matchpoint scoring), so it would be nice to make six. How are you going to play for 12 tricks? Hint: Note that West overcalled 2 ♥ in direct seat.
I will offer my solution after you’ve worked a bit to solve it. Here is the original post from June 5th:
Here is another one from George S. Coffin. This one seems impossible to me. I ran it thourgh my Bridge Composer double dummy software to see if that app found a solution. It did not. So, either Coffin made an editorial or compositional error or he craftily outwitted the software and me. Which do you think it is?
You are in Six No Trump with the queen of diamonds opening lead.
Coffin gave some hints as to what he had in mind:
Maybe you can find a way around that. Good luck.
Email me or put a note in the comments when you would like the solution.
Here is a shorter puzzle from George S. Coffin:
You are South and and the lead is in your hand. Your challenge is to take the last six tricks:
How and when are you going to make best use of your clubs?
I have been dipping into an old book by George S. Coffin, Sure Tricks (2nd edition, 1950). Our copy once belonged to H. Kunimura (any of you recall that name?). Somehow the club obtained it over the years. I googled and was surprised to find the book listed at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Sure-tricks-George-S-COFFIN/dp/B000M8HNSC
It contains lots of fun double dummy puzzles. Also play problems in which you are challenged to make your contract by visualizing the worst possible lie of opponents’ cards (thus the title of the book: Sure Tricks).
Here is a sample of his double dummy puzzles:
*Typo: Lead corrected to queen of hearts rather than queen of diamonds 6/9/20.
Here is the solution if you give up: Coffin1 Solution
Here is a good visualization exercise for you. I recently saw this hand played in a BBO tournament, and no declarers seemed to put on their Mike Lawrence thinking cap. See if you can do better:
I win the ace of diamonds, East playing the three. What do I make of the opening lead? Opponents started with seven diamonds: Hierarchy of honors K Q J 10 9 as well as the deuce and trey. From what holding would West lead a little diamond when North has made a 2/1 diamond response?
Give this some Mike Lawrence kine thought, and let me know in comments or by email what you conclude.
You are South in 3NT. How are you going to make the contract after East plays the jack of hearts at trick one and you win the queen?
*From I Challenge You by Victor Mollo
Count your sure winners: one spade, two hearts, one diamond, and one club. You need to develop five more winners to get to nine tricks. The diamond suit should set up for four or five of the additional tricks. That gets you to eight or nine tricks. By driving out the king of spades you will have at least nine tricks.
But there is a danger that the opponents will get five tricks before you can get nine! How are you going to avoid that danger and what card do you play at trick two?
This is a common dilemma for declarer, so it would benefit you to work it out before scrolling down for the solution:
It looks like West started with five hearts and East with three. The danger is that West may cash three heart tricks if she has an entry with the king of spades. And East is certain to continue the heart attack when she gets in with the king of diamonds. To prevent this, you must keep East off lead while West still has an entry with the king of spades. Play the queen of spades at trick two. No matter who wins that trick, you have a sure nine tricks when East gets in with the king of diamonds: two spades, two hearts, four diamonds, and one club. And you will make an overtrick if West has the king of diamonds. If East happens to get in with the king of spades at trick two, you can safely duck her heart return and take your ace when she continues hearts at trick four.
Steve Bartholomew recently emailed me some declarer play puzzles from Victor Mollo’s book I Challenge You. (Thanks, Steve.) Mollo’s challenge is to use readily available clues to guide your declarer play. Mollo says at the outset, “there’s nothing up my sleeve, no traps for the unwary, and above all, no abstruse conventions in the bidding to obscure the clarity of the play”.
Here, for example, is the first puzzle:
West leads out the ace, king, queen of spades. You ruff the 3rd spade in hand. How are you going to play from here to make the contract?
Scroll down for the solution:
It’s a near certainty that East has the ace of clubs and King of diamonds (West did not open the bidding). Lead your singleton club and put in the 10. If it loses to the jack, there is nothing East can do to hurt you. When you get to dummy again you will take ruffing finesses against East’s ace of clubs to discard your two losing diamonds.
Did I say, “when you get to dummy again”? You did not lazily ruff that third spade with the heart seven, did you? Of course not, you saw the need to preserve the eight of hearts as an entry to dummy. The eight is equal to the ace in its trick taking power against opponents holding of deuce through six of hearts.
Here is a somewhat difficult declarer problem from a recent hand I observed on BBO. You are South with the hand and bidding shown:
Opening lead is the eight of diamonds. How many losers do you have and how are you going to handle the trump suit?
You have one or two losers in clubs. After you take the ace and king of diamonds you may be able to ruff a diamond loser or two. After you win the ace of hearts you may be able to ruff a heart loser or two. Spades look like they can come in with no losers if you get the likely 3-2 break.
Since it looks like you are going to have to do some ruffing of red suit cards, maybe you should not get in a rush to draw trump.
Say you draw two rounds of trump. Now you can ruff two heart losers in hand. That would get you to 10 tricks as long as the ace of clubs is onside.
It looks best to ignore trumps from the get go. Cash the ace of hearts at trick two. Ruff a heart. Cash the king of diamonds. Ruff a diamond. Ruff a heart. Ruff a diamond. You are almost assured of 10 tricks.
The hand will make five spades against perfect defense. It’s a nice double dummy problem. Here is the entire hand if you would like to give it a try:
Declarers who drew three round of trump went down one.
In our game it’s often hard to avoid playing by instinct. I recently made an instinctual misplay at trick one when West led the seven of hearts on this hand:
My instinct was “oh, goodie – a free finesse!” I played low from dummy. Only as I was about to lead to trick two did I contemplate how to play trumps should they break 4-1. It was too late. I needed to win trick one in dummy and cash the queen of spades. Then I can come to hand in hearts at trick two and draw trumps.
BTW, assuming I had played correctly at trick one, how are you going to play the minor suits? You know where the heart queen is, right? Yes, right!
You are in three diamonds (both vul) as South. North had a difficult decision after West’s preempt and reasonably chose to respond three diamonds. That’s where the bidding ended:
West led the ace of spades, South playing the Jack and you the six (trying to hide the spade situation from West). West continued with a low spade and East ruffed with the six of diamonds.
At trick 3 East shifts to the nine of hearts. You play the jack and it wins as West follows with the deuce.
At trick 4 you lead the deuce of diamonds, West discards a low spade, you play the king and East plays a low diamond. How many diamonds did East start with? It does not look like you will make the contract. What do you do now?
When I observed the hand, declarer did not get flummoxed. She reasoned that she needed to do as well or better than the other NS pairs. After all, diamonds were going to break 5-0 for all declarers. She managed to hold it to down one. Do you see how?
She had lost one spade, one spade ruff, and was sure to lose two more diamonds. If she could hold her club losers to one, she would get out for down 1. It was likely that East held the club ace, so if she could endplay East, the ace would be her only club loser.
At tricks five and six she cashed her two top hearts ending in hand. Then she led a low spade ruffed with dummy’s and overruffed with East’s nine. At trick eight East led the diamond queen taken with declarer’s ace. At trick nine she led the king of spades, but East could see the endplay coming and refused to ruff. Declarer then led a trump to East’s winner and the endplay was complete, resulting in 75 percent of the matchpoints for NS.
Here is the entire hand:
You may want to lay out the hand with cards on the table to make sure you follow it all.
BTW, West erred in leading the ace of spades. Any other lead and South will go down two. Some declarers went down three, failing to make the endplay.
Here is a hand I saw played by Ralph Katz sitting South:
Note that Katz will go down immediately if West leads a diamond. However, West chose the reasonable lead of the ace of clubs.
Katz ruffed and visualized the East hand. This is what I infer that Katz was thinking: East had opened the bidding and, after rebidding his diamonds, should hold the ace and king of diamonds. West led the ace of clubs, so presumably has the king as well. Also, it appears that an unbalanced hand with length in clubs would justify West’s aggressive bidding. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that East holds the Q J of hearts to justify his opening bid.
Assume Katz visualized a hand like the one East held, do you see how he avoided losing one heart and two diamonds? He made his doubled contract! How did Katz Play?
You are South in four hearts after the bidding shown below:
West leads the ace of clubs, East playing the deuce. At trick two West shifts to the jack of spades. You play the queen, East plays the king, and you win with the ace.
You have one spade loser and two club losers. How are you going to handle the trump suit for no losers? The percentage play when missing three trumps is to finesse for the king. But how are you going to get to dummy to do that?
Instead of the heart finesse, maybe you can discard your losing spade on the ace of diamonds? But that requires that you drop the singleton king of hearts, otherwise the defense will cash their spade winner before you can get to dummy.
Is that king of diamonds a mirage? Maybe it would be helpful for you to think of it as a low diamond. Does that make you decision any easier?
It was hard for NS to put on the brakes on this hand:
South decided to make the takeout double rather than overcall with his nice hand. When his rebid was two spades, he confirmed a big hand. North was broke and signed off in three diamonds, which went down two.
I suggest South could have done better by overcalling one spade at 1st turn. In retrospect the Q 8 of hearts should be downgraded, and there is too much uncertainty about finding a spade fit. The overcall will get that cleared up immediately. (It’s, of course, easy for me to say all this when all four hands are visible!)
Be careful not to fall in love with your hand when RHO has opened the bidding. Your partner is unlikely to have much help.
Notice the difference between this auction and the auction in my last two posts (here and here) on this hand. This time East chose not to open 1NT while holding a five-card major. Opening 1NT with a five-card major works out most of the time in opinion of experts. But this time the major suit opening bid worked out better for EW.
You have one losing spade. If you can drop the jack of hearts in the third round, you will be able to pitch two losing spades from dummy. That’s a 27 percent chance. Do you see any other possibilities?
Yesterday I wrote about an eye opening slam auction by Robert Levin and Geoff Hampson. I enjoyed a two-fer when Levin’s play of the slam also opened my eyes! Here was the hand and the bidding with Levin sitting West.
A slam will bid and well played.
:
This is a good double dummy exercise involving an end play, Can you figure it out? Answer tomorrow afternoon.
Here is a good lesson in planning the play from Wednesday’s lesson at the club:
