On this board from the Columbia sectional, I was convinced that I had a simple black suit squeeze against west in 3NT for an overtrick. However, west’s overcall wasn’t as strong as it could have been so he had to only guard clubs. But before I get in to the play, would you have gotten to 3NT?
Dealer: N Vul: Both | North ♠ Q8 ♥ QT4 ♦ KQ9863 ♣ T5 | |
West ♠ T7 ♥ K973 ♦ 2 ♣ KJ9863 | East ♠ KJ94 ♥ A8652 ♦ T74 ♣ 4 | |
South ♠ A6532 ♥ J ♦ AJ5 ♣ AQ72 |
South | West | North | East |
1♠ | 2♣ | 2♦ | Pass |
3♣ | Pass | 3♦ | Pass |
3NT | Pass | Pass | Pass |
Who has the hearts is what I was thinking when 2♦ came back to me. I sure didn’t have ‘em but I knew we had the points for game so I bid 3♣ to see if partner could tell me anything more useful. As expected, he eeked out a minimum 3♦ call and I decided to just go for 3NT. Good for them if they can take the first 5 heart tricks.
3NT is pretty much unbeatable. If the defense establishes hearts, that sets up a 9th trick for me. A spade lead would give me problems but who would lead a spade on this auction?
Against me, the defense started with a heart to the A, and club ducked to the J, ♥K and a heart to dummy’s Q. I then cashed the ♠A and ran the diamonds. Having lost 3 tricks, after the last diamond, dummy still had ♠Q ♣T left and I had ♣AQ in hand.
If west started with both black kings as I expected from the bidding, he would be squeezed, having to stiff his ♣K to keep dummy’s ♠Q from being good. Thanks to the opponents for helping me rectify the count early in the hand to set up a potential squeeze. Alas, west had a crappy 2♣ overcall and I made only 3. However, +600 was worth all the matchpoints. I guess 3NT was just a hard contract to reach whether they overcall or not.
This is good technique. It should be reward just to know that in a typical MP field, this line would score Ave+ not only for getting to 3 NT, but for executing the squeeze for trick 10.
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