The Balanced Suit! The Balanced Suit!


K J 9 8 4 3 2
A Q 10 4
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Q J
6 Q 10 7 5
K 6 5 8 3
K Q 7 5 4 3 2 9 8 6
8 4 A 10 9 3
A
J 9 7 2
A J 10 Contract: 6 spades, 6 hearts
K 7 6 5 2 Opening lead: various

An interesting hand with an interesting variety of results. Five people made the heart slam, while four were down one, and six were down multiple tricks. One was down 3 in 6 no, while 5 were down multiple tricks in 6 spades, and three were down one in that contract. Well, first lemme take a look at the five who pulled their slam home.
I want to see if it's the opening lead, defensive malfeasance or declarer skill. The first one I look at indicates all three! Opening lead the king of diamonds, declarer sluffing a club in dummy. He now leads the jack of diamonds, sluffing the second club when it is uncovered. West should certainly cover. He gets no value from his second diamond honor, when he should be cutting declarer down to 3 trump in dummy, the same number as he has, which may or may not kill the spade suit. Anyway, now a heart to the queen, then a spade to the ace, a heart to the 10, ruff a spade with the J, overruffed and the record ends. Hm-m-mm. Well, lemme see. Yes, it would seem that the contract is cold then. Dummy has two trump left, the closed hand one, the defense none. Declarer has just enough for everything he needs, which is an entry to dummy to lead one more spade, a trump to ruff another round of spades and another entry to dummy to cash out the spades.
Another declarer did what the first one did, pushing the ten of diamonds through at trick 2 to discard a second club, then two rounds of trump, an overruff on the 2nd round of spades, etc. Another declarer's LHO did cover that diamond honor second round, but declarer was able to handle it. Back with a spade, sluff another club on the last diamond honor, finesse Q of hearts, spade lead, ruffed and overruffed. Dummy had been cut down to the same number of trump as West at trick two, but with the overruff of the spade from dummy, dummy again has one more than West, and now can handle a club lead, ruffed in dummy.
The closed hand now has two trump (one lead, one ruff) and every other hand has one. Declarer now leads a third spade, ruffs with the 9, and now every hand has one trump left. Declarer enters dummy with the A of hearts and runs spades. It's a close thing when that J of diamonds is covered, to which a cynic might snap "So what! He made it, didn't he?" but any seasoned bridge player knows that the closer the call for astute play, the likelier declarer will stumble.
Two declarers got a spade opening lead, and got two different pieces of foolishness from their RHO. Three heart leads, leaving a trump in each hand. K of spades, sluffing a diamond, J of spades covered and ruffed, club to the Q and A, club back to the J. And now declarer could run spades starting with the 9. Run spades starting with the 9! Yes, in truth, East played the 10 of spades on the first trick! Whoa! East can see 12 spades with that lead. The only one he can't see is the ace. He's gotta figure that it's far, far likelier that his partner led a singleton than that he underled an ace doubleton, no? So the 10 was foolishly wasted there. After three rounds of trump, declarer wouldn't have been able to ruff the fourth round of spades and would have had to go down.
The other declarer ran through the same first four tricks, then played the Q of clubs taken by East with a club shot back, K of spades, sluffing a diamond, ruff a spade, and now declarer could run clubs because . . . because East had played the 10 of clubs on the third round of hearts! I've seen this before, more times than I could count. What I'm referring to is signalling some good stuff in a suit with a card that now means you don't have such good stuff!
I certainly regard that as a signal, considering that East had a couple of diamonds he could spare and that he didn't merely discard the 3 (which would have been just as costly but at least wouldn't involve the contradictory practice of announcing good stuff with the card that wipes out the good stuff you're advertising). Or did East think only the A mattered? Please note that the 10 and 9 and 3 are all as valuable as the A! They are all necessary to inhibit the run of clubs in the closed hand. Look what happens if East doesn't signal with that 10. Declarer can't set up spades with only one trump left in the closed hand on that 4-1 split. And he can't set up clubs (to advantage) because he has only one entry to the closed hand and will need two, one to ruff out the fourth round of clubs and one to get back to the 5th club. So the contract would seem to be unmakable on a spade lead.
Because he played the 10 and not the 3 and because he had three completely worthless diamonds he would have done well to discard, I have to believe that 10 of clubs was meant as a signal. "Partner, I've got some good stuff here, and I want you to know about it." Whether he realized that the really good stuff wasn't just the ace, but the length including the 10 9, I cannot say. In any event, I'd like to point out that you don't hafta signal your partner at every chance you get, that you don't want to signal if it will injure the value of your holding, that declarer has his own hill to climb and sometimes you're far better off just taking your natural tricks and letting declarer try to work out how to fulfill his contract. An A 10 9 3 puts you in pretty good stead of controlling the fourth round of a suit, provided you pick up an honor with that ace, which here would obviously have been no problem. I might point to that incautious discard in another manner: East's cutting his clubs down to three has the effect of giving declarer a 3-3 club split -- while other declarers are dealing with a 4-2. I don't think you want to give your opponents such an advantage.
So three declarers got a favorable opening lead and took advantage of that gift. Two didn't get such a favorable lead, but got a different sort of gift. Now lemme look at the opposite extreme and see how declarers went down three! Yikes! The first one I looked at got the same favorable opening lead! K of D to the A, J covered and ruffed low, A of hearts. A of hearts! I dunno. Why he'd disdain a finesse (with an easy re-entry by way of the A of spades), I cannot explain. No use going through more of the hand. Then, would you believe, the next declarer (down 3) got the same favorable opening lead!
This one continued better: Diamond J covered at trick 2, spade to the ace, D ten, sluffing the second club (so now he can afford losing a trick to the K of hearts), spade K ruffed (!). You don't wanna cash the K of spades before trump are out. You wanna establish the suit for running. One ruff would do it on a 3-2 split. You don't get the 3-2 split, but you do get something almost as good (on the K of diamonds opening lead), which is the ability to sluff dummy's clubs and the king of hearts in the long holding overruffing a low spade. That's important because it means you can draw trump in only two rounds, leaving you with four trump instead of two for giving up only that K of hearts! Now a bad trade, eh? Now you can ruff any return, ruff one more round of spades, and enter dummy with its last trump to run the spades.
Well, I guess that's enough of the play of the hand. There remains the bidding and the sizable minority that wound up in spades. It shouldn't be. You have no chance in spades. Indeed, you wouldn't have any chance on a 3-2 spade split. One of the reasons for favoring the balanced over the unbalanced is that you can commonly ruff out a round of the unbalanced suit if it's not trump. Here, a 3-2 spade split (along with a winning finesse in hearts) would seem to make 6 hearts a cakewalk. True, you don't get it, but there's still some chance on a defensive misplay, where there is none in a spade contract. So which would you rather have: no chance at all, or a cakewalk on a 3-2 split and some chance on a 4-1?
Yet, at a number of tables, not only did the spade hand believe he had to make that suit trump, but hearts weren't even mentioned! Here's one bidding scheme where the South hand above opens with a club, 3 D from his LHO and 5 S from his partner! At another table, there is a 5 H bid that was obviously a Blackwood response to 4 NT, but the suit was not bid as a suit. I can only point out that you've got to smoke out those balanced (major suit) fits for best results.