Dummy Squeezes are Fun

So, the second place streak continued. Joel and I were 2^nd in the D7 Flight A North American Pairs. Of course, that’s a much tougher event than the sectional events the week before. Almost all of the top players from the district showed up.  It’s exactly 6 years after David and I qualified (barely) for a trip to the NAPs in flight B. The spring 2007 NABC was in St. Louis as well and as I recall it was one of my least favorite NABC venues, although that may be just because it was very cold and rainy.

We played pretty well all day but weren’t getting any really great boards until the second half of the evening session. We bid 4♠ with a shapely 13 opposite 7 hcp, got doubled and made an overtrick. They tried to steal from us by making a light 2♥ overcall and a natural 2NT from advancer. On the companion board, they tried to steal from us again and more good things happened for us.

Dealer: E Vul: NS	North ♠ 5 ♥ AJ76 ♦ KJ ♣ AKT432
West ♠ J3 ♥ QT8 ♦ AQ32 ♣ J965		East ♠ AQ9862 ♥ 9543 ♦ 74 ♣ Q
	South ♠ KT74 ♥ K2 ♦ T9865 ♣ 87

East	South	West	North
2♠	Pass	3♠	X
Pass	3NT	Pass	Pass
Pass

The 3♠ raise on Jx may have shut out some players or gotten an uncomfortable 4♣ overcall but for us, it just steered us right into 3NT. If west passes, we may wind up in 3♦. And if east doesn’t open because of the 4 hearts, we likely would have wound up in 3♣ making. So, a lot of matchpoints were on the line in 3NT. The opening lead is the ♠J. East ducks, south wins the K, plays a top club, comes back to the ♥K, plays a club to the T, ♣A, and then a club to west’s J. How should east discard?

Seeing all the hands, it’s easy enough to see that east should discard spades, so that after taking the ♠AQ, he can squeeze/endplay dummy. The defense would come to 1 club, 2 spades, and either a diamond and a heart or 2 diamonds depending on how dummy discarded. However, it must be tempting to keep all the spades, especially at matchpoints where a 2^nd or 3^rd undertrick could be valuable. That would mean discarding potentially safe diamond exit cards or discarding hearts, potential allowing a long heart in dummy to be good.

Think about declarer’s line of play. Even after the Q fell under the ace, the only way to pick the suit up for no losers was to play for QJ doubleton so declarer was always willing to concede a club trick. Would he do that without a second spade stopper and with a source of tricks in hearts? Furthermore, would he have taken the first trick with only Kxx? Probably not.

Is it really important to hold heart length with dummy? Maybe. If declarer has the Q, it doesn’t matter. The critical situation is when declarer started with Kxx, meaning partner’s Q will fall under the A and letting declarer score 4 heart tricks would be devastating.

Yes, we normally would expect partner to have 3 spades to raise and NS did bid 3NT under pressure so south may not have as much as he would like opposite a t/o double. That swings things the other way a little bit but most of the evidence points toward declarer having a second spade stopper, in which case east has no reason to hold more than the AQ.

Discard a discouraging diamond first, then 2 spades. Partner will win the club and lead a spade to east. Dummy sheds a heart first and then is squeezed when east cashes the next spade. Here is the end situation with east on lead at trick 8 and 2 tricks in the bag.

Dealer: E Vul: NS	North ♠ ♥ AJ ♦ KJ ♣ 43
West ♠ ♥ QT ♦ AQ32 ♣		East ♠ A6 ♥ 954 ♦ 4 ♣
	South ♠ T7 ♥ 2 ♦ T98 ♣

On the ♠A, dummy cannot retain both red tenaces without discarding a club winner so he lets go of a diamond. East can’t afford to play a spade because it would give declarer his T and can’t afford to play a heart because it gives declarer a finesse he can’t take on his own so on a diamond lead west takes the ♦AQ for -1. As it happened, east had discarded 2 diamonds and a spade and was forced to lead a major suit at trick 8 so we wrapped up 5 clubs, 3 hearts, and a spade for the +600 and a tie for top. 

It’s at this point when I really started to feel like we could win the thing. Patty and Kevin, however, followed up their 60% with a 59.5% to beat us by 3/4 of a board.