There’s a golf saying that certain holes don’t "fit your eye". During my varsity golf tryout, on the 7th hole I had to hit a shot carefully to avoid a lake on one side and a deep bunker on the other. If I survived that, I would need aother shot over water to the green. It didn’t fit my eye.

I hit one tee shot into the water. Then I shanked my drop into the same water. Lying 4, I hit an iron perfectly. I watched it soar towards the green only to land a few yards short, straight into the water. My entire golf bag followed the ball into the water.

On occasion, our brains can’t handle a particular situation. If our tendency is to freeze up, give up, or blow up-- we need to work at that situation until we have a degree of comfort with it.

I’ve seen a lot of self-reporting of this type of behavior in bridge. Players tell me “Oh I hate playing 1NT” or “I hate playing in 4-3 fits” or in doubled contracts or… There are many contracts that might not fit our eyes, but we can’t just skip that deal—it will still count.

We, South, hold: 

 J65  
 AQ65  
 K63  
 K86
 

The auction starts: 

West	North	East	South
2	Dbl	Pass	?

 

Vul:None Dlr: W	87  K32  A87  AQ932
	J65  AQ65  K63  K86

 

 

What Will You Do?

Partner’s takeout double of 2 doesn’t guarantee four hearts, but it would be nice. We belong in game with 13 points opposite partner’s opening values (even devaluing the J). We must bid 4 since we have no ability to play in notrump and we have at least 7 hearts combined (or else partner has a power double and will bid again).

The Play

The lead is the A followed by the K. East follows both times (high-low 10-9). The Q comes next…and?

We’ve already lost two tricks. We know East will be out of spades on this trick, and we can afford only one more loser. What’s to be done?

We could discard a diamond from dummy now, but we could also discard our diamond loser on extra winners in the club suit. If we discard a diamond from dummy now, we would need to play trumps for 0 losers, which might be impossible on a 4-2 trump split. [Note: we should expect a 4-2 split].

Instead of discarding, we should ruff this LOW. Yes, East can overruff, but if East is the one holding four trumps, they are overruffing with a natural trick. In the unlikely event that West has four hearts to go with six spades, then we're going down. That's life.  

We ruff and East overruffs, returning a diamond. Are we done thinking? Not quite!

Which hand you win the diamond in is very important. If you win in declarer's hand (correctly), you can survive a 4-1 club split. Check out the full deal to see how careful play allows you to lose only one heart (the overruff) plus the two spade tricks.

After winning the diamond with the king, you draw trumps in three rounds (East started with four, but it was possible that the suit split 3-3 as well). Next, you play clubs.

It turns out that East has four clubs as well (a 4-1 split).  This is not a problem thanks to our thoughtful play of the K. You play four rounds of clubs, ruffing the last one with your final trump and establishing the 2. Now, you can get back to your good club with the carefully preserved A.

 

Vul:None Dlr: W	87  K32  A87  AQ932
AKQ432  97  10542  5		109  J1084  QJ9  J1074
	J65  AQ65  K63  K86

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These deals are not as natural feeling as ones where we have 8 or 9 trups, but we can still succeed by following our general principles. On this deal, we ruffed in the hand with fewer trumps and considered which hand we needed to get to when deciding between winning in one hand or the other.