Bridge hands from Tuesday night!

In case there are eager readers who have been checking this site regularly awaiting a new bridge deal, the time has come. If you read this blog for the non-technical bridge articles, check back tomorrow - there will be something for you!

Last night I had some interesting problems. The most interesting to me was this defensive hand.

Dealer: N Vul: None			North ♠ AQJx ♥ T8x ♦ xx ♣ KQTx
West ♠ 543 ♥ AJ96 ♦ KTx ♣ 973						East ♠ KTxx ♥ K7 ♦ J9xx ♣ AJ8
			South ♠ xx ♥ Qxxx ♦ AQ8x ♣ xxx
West	North		East	South
—	1♣		Pass	1♦
Pass	1♠		Pass	1NT
Pass	Pass		Pass

I, west, started out with my 4^th best heart. I really wanted to lead a spade against this auction but decided to go with the field this time. Declarer only has 4 sure tricks – 2 spades, a club, and a diamond – and with best defense, that’s all he can take. However, we take the first 3 tricks in hearts while setting up declarer’s Q, so that’s 5 tricks for declarer. There’s no way to really know that south had 4 hearts rather than the suit being 4333. I would have held off playing the 3^rd round of hearts (with a sure diamond entry, there’s no way the ♥A could go away), but didn’t know which suit to lead next. At trick 3, on the ♥A partner played the ♦9. Well, that tells me not to lead a diamond but I don’t think I was going to do that anyway.

Now I guess to lead a club and select the 7. Dummy wins the K and comes off with the ♠Q. Partner takes this and fires a diamond through and my ten takes the trick. By now we both know declarer is at least 4-4 in the red suits and east “knows” that declarer has 3 clubs – my lead of the 7 could hardly have been from a 4 card suit and declarer’s spade play sort of implies that he has a doubleton. Anyway, now I put the ♣9 on the table, clearing up the club count, sort of. At least it guarantees that I have a 3^rd club or else I would have led the 9 first. Declarer finesses and when partner wins the J, it is tempting to cash the A. However, he can safely lead another diamond, knowing that he still has spades stopped and that I am kind of marked with another diamond honor. Plus, since I now am “known” to have 3 clubs, we’ll still be able to take the club later. I guess it could go away if declarer’s initial diamond holding was AKxxx because the early diamond discard now means declarer’s 4^th diamond would be a winner. But with that, he may have tried to set up diamonds on his own.

My second most interesting problem of the night was an opening lead against 2♠. RHO had opened a 15-17 1NT and LHO transferred to spades while my p stuck in a lead-directing double of 2♥. I held ♠QTx, ♥AJTx, ♦xx, ♣J9xx. Obviously I’m going to lead a heart and if partner has the KQ, it doesn’t really matter which heart I lead. However, if partner has only the K (say Kxxxx), it may be necessary to let p win the first heart trick so we can finesse declarer out of the Q and start tapping dummy. If I start with the ♥A, we may not be able to effectively make dummy ruff without setting up declarer’s Q. I will not even consider the possibility that partner does not have the ♥K – Kxxxx is the bare minimum for a lead-directing double at the 2-level (in fact, I actually think that suit is too weak but I won’t argue much against it).

So, the question is: will the J, T, or x be more likely to get partner to play the K at trick 1? I figured if I lead the J or T, he may let it go with K-empty, thinking we may not have adequate spots to be wasting 2 honors. If I lead low, at least it could be from the Q so he’ll surely play 3^rd hand high. So, I selected the small heart it was a revolting development when dummy tabled Qx and it went low, 8, 9.

My third interesting problem was what to do with QJxx, AQJ9xx, J, Jx after it went 1♠-2♦ to me. There are four reasonable options:

a) 2♥, planning to bid 4♠ next time (or 5♠ if they take an advance save).

b) 3♦, a limit raise or better, but then how do I know whether I have the right hand to move if partner just jumps to game.

c) 4♦, a splinter, putting things in partner’s hands.

d) 3♥, a fit-showing jump-shift. This is really the best option if you are playing a jump-shift this way. I’m not sure if Emory and I are or not so I didn’t bid it.

This is more of a bidding theory/style kind of problem – nothing interesting actually happened on this deal.