Taking a second look By Josh Donn

Source: BBO 

Hi everyone and welcome! I will give a lecture for about 30 minutes, then take another 30 minutes or so to answer questions from the crowd. Today I will speak about “taking a second look”. What I mean by that is, when you are declaring a hand, and you think you have solved the problem, to look a little deeper and see if there is more to it. First I have to give credit. Today’s example hands are adapted from hands from the teachings of world famous bridge teacher Audrey Grant. Please check out her website and consider joining. It has great stuff. So let me get right into a hand and look at a declarer play problem. You are South. I am not really talking much about bidding today, but let’s have a quick auction. North will open 1 and south will respond 1 . North has a 1NT rebid (not 2 with a five card suit and a balanced hand!) South should rebid 2 . It might be an 8 card fit, and even if it’s just a 7 card fit it should play nicely with the nice heart suit. 2 will be passed out. And of course West will lead the diamond king. So let’s count what tricks we can take. It is easy to see 5 hearts, 1 club, and 1 diamond. In spades, we might get a trick either by leading to the king, or by eventually ruffing a spade in dummy. So an intuitive way to play the hand would be to win the lead, come to your hand in hearts, and lead a spade to the king. East, with the clubs well stopped so dummy’s suit isn’t a threat, may return a trump. The diamond can come later. Now you might play another spade, hoping to ruff in dummy. Even if East doesn’t figure out to duck this to west’s jack, west will gain the lead in diamonds to play a third trump, and you will never get your ruff. Now there is no real hope of an 8th trick. OK so, let’s go back to the beginning. That play is probably not best. But there is a surer way of getting the 8th trick, that is actually easier to see if dummy has two low spades instead of Kx. You can lead a spade from dummy immediately. This will ensure your ruff, since the opponents can’t play three rounds of trumps first. Suppose you leave your analysis at that. Let’s see how it might go. You win the diamond and lead a spade off dummy. Suppose East returns a trump, trying to stop a spade ruff. That might work if West held three hearts to the ace or king. Suppose you win this in your hand. You might think it’s a good idea to save the queen of hearts in dummy, to make sure no one can overruff you on the spade. Now you lead another spade. And East plays another trump. You have to win this in your hand since it’s your only entry to ruff a spade. You ruff the spade, as planned. It seems you got to 8 tricks, but there is another problem. How do you get off the dummy? Suppose you try a low club, planning to ruff the third round back to your hand. Surely they will take their diamonds now. And if west is sharp, a club will be played back, locking you in the dummy. Now when you try to ruff a club back to your hand, there is a danger of being overruffed. Was there any way to avoid this? Let’s go to the beginning one more time. The problem was winning the heart in your hand. So you win the diamond and play a spade from dummy to start setting up your ruff. East returns a trump… You have to plan ahead to the point you ruff the spade in dummy, and see there may be no way back to your hand. The idea of keeping a high heart in dummy seems logical, but there is really no chance the third round of spades gets overruffed anyway, since that means someone didn’t bid a 6 card spade suit. The bigger danger is what I just showed, that you struggle to return to your hand later. So you should keep all the high hearts possible in your hand. Win this with the queen. Now continue your plan of setting up a spade ruff. East plays another trump. You ruff the spade. And now, with only one trump missing, you can eventually ruff a club high back to your hand. No danger of an overruff. That is what I mean by taking a second look. You might think once you have gotten the idea of playing a spade away from the king, your problems are over. Don’t stop thinking and looking ahead to see what other problems may arise. I have one more hand with the same theme in mind. OK let’s bid this one. On this hand, a ton of different auctions are possible. I will just show one that might happen. South opens 1. Let’s suppose north bids 2. South might rebid 2NT with the major suits well stopped. North will probably show the diamond support at this point. And with bad diamonds and strong major suit holdings, south may sign off in 3NT. West will lead a heart, and let’s make a plan from there. There are 7 top tricks. 2 spades, 2 hearts, 2 clubs, and 1 diamond. 2 more tricks might come from either minor suit. If clubs break evenly, you can give up the third round and get 2 extra club tricks. If diamonds break evenly and the king is onside, you can likewise get 2 extra diamond tricks by taking a finesse, giving up the third round, and the fourth round will be good. So you might wonder which suit to play on. You probably have to get it right since, let’s say you would lose a trick unnecessarily, the opponents will set up their hearts quickly, and you will be in trouble. So you see either suit would need a 3-2 break to set up quickly, but diamonds will also need a finesse. You don’t even have to know the exact odds of anything happening. It is plainly obvious that a 3-2 club break is more likely than the combination of a 3-2 diamond break PLUS a finesse. So suppose, having reached the conclusion to play on clubs, you start playing the hand. You win the lead, of course. The natural way to play clubs seems to be ace first (honor from the short side first), so let’s try that. Now you play another club, and on this layout you get the bad news. You win the king. Now you have a problem. You are stuck in the wrong hand. You might recover on this layout by ducking a diamond from dummy. Of course you would have to unblock the spades first. But it was unnecessary to create such complications. There is a much simpler way to play the hand. Let’s go back to the beginning. You win the heart lead. Now, any time there is a blocked suit like the spades here, that is a sign you need to be careful with your entries. It would be nice if you could test the clubs, but end in your hand. Then you can find out what’s happening in diamonds right away. So make the unnatural looking play of a club to the king first. Then a club to the ace, and you will be in your hand to decide what suit to play at that point. If clubs were breaking evenly, you would play the ace of spades (otherwise a heart return leaves you with no entry to the spade king), then you could give up a club, and the path to 9 tricks would be clear. But clubs didn’t break evenly. Now try a diamond finesse. And when it works, the hand becomes easy. Play the ace, unblock the ace of spades for simplicity, and give up a diamond. They can set up the hearts, but you have your 9 tricks. You always want to play ahead. Don’t be satisfied that you decided what minor suit to play first. Plan for the whole hand. This example may not have been perfect. Perhaps an improvement would have been to make dummy’s diamonds AJTx, where it is crucial to lead both rounds from your hand. But it still illustrates the point. The hand becomes much simpler by planning ahead for your entries. Not just saying, clubs are better than diamonds, let’s go. So those are the hands I planned for today. I will be happy to take questions now. Thanks everyone. Read the Questions and answers: Click Here