LEARNING CENTER

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This deal appeared only as a Bidding Challenge in Bridge World Magazine. I was intrigued by the declarer-play possibilities. Say you are playing matchpoints with both sides vulnerable, holding:

 AK53  
 A4  
 K74  
 Q1082

You open 1NT and partner responds 2. Over your 2, he bids 3. That is natural and game forcing. With no fit and lots of black-suit stoppers, you try 3NT. Partner bids 4. He likely has 6+ hearts, some diamonds and slam interest. You elect to pass (which was the winning action in the Bridge World) since the layout is:

97  J108652  AQ53  A

AK53  A4  K74  Q1082

Slam is poor, since there are likely two trump losers (not to mention other issues). A low club is led and your main concern is overtricks. Assume it is matchpoint scoring. Thinking of dummy as the master hand (always use the long trump hand), you won't lose any tricks in spades or clubs. The fourth round of diamonds and the trump suit are the key issues. How should you play the hearts? Your best chance to lose only one trump trick (other than KQ doubleton) is that RHO started with Qx or Kx. Lead the J from dummy, intending to let it run. It loses to LHO's K and he returns a heart. You are pleased to see RHO produce the queen under your ace. Now, you are up to 11 tricks and have only the diamonds to worry about.

Rather than rely on 3-3 diamonds, you should first try to ruff out the K. You trump a club in dummy, draw the remaining trump (RHO throws a club), and come to the spade ace to ruff another club. Nothing good happens, but before testing diamonds, you should win the K and ruff a spade in dummy. At this point, you are almost sure to have your 12th trick. Even without knowing much about squeezes, consider what you've done. Only one player can guard against your Q. After playing three rounds of spades and trumping a spade in dummy, only one player can remain with a spade guard against the low spade in your hand. So, if diamonds aren't 3-3, you will still be okay if the player with 4 diamonds has to also protect against those black-suit threats in your hand.

Sorry about all the squeeze terminology (not an area I usually go to in my Intermediate articles). A look at the full deal might make it clearer:

Vul:Both Dlr: South	97  J108652  AQ53  A
Q104  K97  J9  KJ964		J862  Q3  10862  753
	AK53  A4  K74  Q1082

You won the A and passed the J to West. You won the heart return, ruffed a club and drew the last trump. You came to the A to ruff another club. Then you played the K and ruffed a spade with dummy's last trump. At this point, dummy's last 4 cards are the AQ53. In your hand, you have K7 and a loser in each black suit. As you can see, East can't cope. If he retained all 4 diamonds, he would have had to let go of his 4th spade. All you have to watch is to see if your Q is good, or if somebody throws away the long spade. If neither happens, you just try the diamonds and hope the 13th is good. Here, proper technique would produce 680 and an excellent matchpoint score.

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