A Tricky Hand


K J 5 3 2
K Q 7 6
Q J 3 2
------
A 9 6 4 Q 8
10 9 3 A J 8 4 2
9 7 5 4 6
7 6 J 10 8 5 2
10 7Vul: None
5Opening lead: 10 of hearts
A K 10 8
A K Q 9 4 3

SouthWestNorthEast
1 Pass 1 Pass
3 Pass 3 Pass
3 NT Allpass
A tricky hand, eh wot? An awfully tricky hand. It looks as if the contract can be beat on a heart lead. When dummy's honors are split, East ducks, and now declarer, with 8 top tricks has no way of generating a ninth without leading a spade, affording the defense an opportunity to run 5 tricks. But wait a minute! Declarer has his own counter to that. He ducks the first two heart leads, and now, with K Q tight left in dummy, there is no more communication in hearts between the defensive hands and the contract can be made on a right guess in spades. Of course, that's looking at all hands. The 10 of hearts lead has been known to come out of a holding of A 10 9 8 5, and now ducking two heart leads would set declarer up for a down trick he could have avoided. Not to mention guessing right on the spades. So we have to be careful not to jump on a player for not playing as well as we can looking at 52 cards. Still, there were a few declarers whose play can be questioned, some for not taking the only chance available, some for cashing out top winners and not developing the necessary two tricks they need with seven top winners.
Seventy-three people were in a no trump game (a sprinkling in 4 no and 5 no). What percentage would you guess made it? Well, it was less than half! Thirty-eight went down while 35 made it! Nor were they all or even most getting the most devasting defense, which I hold to be a heart lead as above. In a few cases, when declarer split his honors on a heart lead, East dutifully went up with the ace and continued the suit, and now the contract can be made, again on a right guess in spades. (Declarer holds up until the third round, cutting off communication.)
I printed out the play of five declarers, one down four, one down three, one down two and two off a trick. Well, lemme run through them briefly. Down 4? This was a clever East who declined to take the queen of hearts when declarer split his honors on the opening lead. Now if West co-operates, the contract can be beat. But down four? This declarer showed the most egregious indifference to developing tricks. At trick two he came to the closed hand on a diamond, cashed his top three clubs and proceeded to finesse a spade into the queen. What kind of sense does that make? When the heart honor holds, you've got 8 top tricks tricks in a 9-trick contract. Your focus should be on developing that 9th trick, not cashing out clubs you've always got access to as long as you don't cash out diamonds. Or, second best, if the situation looks hopeless or dangerous, is to cash out your 8 top tricks for down one. But it makes no sense to uncover your club stoppers and then finesse into the hand with two club winners! East hits his partner with the ace of spades, which was followed by the run of four hearts and then two club winners. Eight tricks to the guys who didn't enter the bidding, 5 to the side that did! Had declarer cashed out his top 8 winners, hoping to find the J 10 of clubs short for a 9th, that would have been in the ballpark, and he at least would have been down only one. Or he must try the spades for a 9th winner, which we can see he can pick up on a right guess, and where he'd be down only 2 on a wrong guess (and best defense). But wiping out club control before testing spades is inexcusable.
Down 3? A diamond lead. Now this contract can be made, even on a losing spade hook. [years later: I have to retract that. East, in with the Q of spades, can lead a low heart to his partner's 10. If declarer takes the trick, hearts will now run when West gets in with the top spade. If declarer holds up two rounds, the hearts don't run, but the defense gets 3 heart tricks and two spades.] But with 7 top unassailable tricks, declarer's task is to develop two, and spades would seem to offer the best hope largely because of the length -- and three of the top 5 cards in the suit. [I might put this another way: hearts offer a sure, quick winner so long as you have access to it. So if you can develop a spade winner, just one, before hearts are set up to be run by the defense, you've got it. If hearts haven't been touched, just hit the K and don't worry about leading toward honors.] So win the opening diamond lead with a top honor and push the 10 of spades through to the queen. The defense has one tactic that defeats the contract, as mentioned above. Otherwise declarer wins a return from East and leads a spade toward the K. The defense cannot at that point prevent a spade winner from being established with a heart to be developed.
Down 2: Diamond opening lead, taken in the closed hand, three top clubs run! Oooo-ooo! He's got so many opportunities. Why uncover two club winners for the defense? It makes no sense. Now declarer finished off his diamonds, and having tucked his 7 top winners in the bag, didn't get another. He finessed into the queen of spades, and now as East cashed the J and 10 of clubs, he squeezed dummy! At the end of 9 tricks, declarer was showing K J of spades, K Q of hearts, and East had the club 10. Whichever major suit declarer gave up on trick 10, the defense would run two tricks in it along with the other ace.
Down one: Heart lead to the queen, which held. Declarer played a diamond to the ace, cashed out his top clubs, then three more diamonds, ending in the closed hand and ran a spade to the queen. He should have made it!, a little ironically, on these grounds: He's uncovered two club winners for East (unwisely, but he's done it). Now East figures to have one of the spade honors. If East has the ace, there's nothing declarer can do about East getting the lead. (That's trick 9, and East cashes two club winners, squeezing dummy, much as above. Dummy would show the king of spades and king of hearts and they're goners. But if East holds the Q, declarer can prevent that defender from getting the lead. Playing the K, in other words, when you want just one quick trick, doubles your chances of winning that trick. West erred here in not jumping up to lead hearts, and declarer should have taken advangage of it.
Second down one: Heart to the king and ace. Now this contract could also be made. Duck a second round of the suit, win the third (as declarer did), come to the closed hand, and this declarer also just has to play his LHO for the ace of spades. Look at it this way. If the A and Q of spades are in the same hand, it doesn't matter what you do. If East has both, you can't escape letting the hand with the long hearts get the lead. If West has both, he can't inhibit a spade winner to go with the other 8. So the crunch comes if the A and Q are split. If East has the long hearts, you can't keep him out of the lead on a finesse. He wins with either with the Q or the A. But if East has the Q, West the ace, then hopping up with the K of spades does prevent East from getting the lead . . . your only chance if how you play the spades matters.
But this declarer played a rather strange game. After properly holding up on hearts, cutting off communication in that suit, he came to the closed hand with a diamond, cashed his top clubs, ran two more diamonds, getting a club then a heart from East, and apparently feeling safe, allowed East a club trick, which was followed by the ace of hearts and a fifth trick for the defense on a spade to the ace. Shouldn't have happened. The last trick was a spade to the king. But this declarer had only 3 diamond winners, and so the heart and spade winners weren't enough. Indeed, considering that the king of spades only won a trick that could have been won with the fourth diamond, that very attractive spade suit simply went to waste.
What should declarer have done? Well, first let me start with what he shouldn't have done, which was to uncover clubs. There are enough dangers -- and opportunities -- out there that you don't want to compound your troubles. And secondly, I'm gonna have to confess that the hand is tricky enough that there's no clear and obvious path to 9 tricks (though in a couple of cases, when East was known to be the dangerous hand, then I think the winning path was marked.) Still, above where declarer's RHO took the first heart trick and declarer wisely held up on the second round and thereby rendered the hand with the long hearts harmless and I felt declarer should have gone up with the king on a spade lead, a little reflection showed that this was hindsight. It's not all that obvious that East and not West has the 5 hearts. The play is not inconsistent with the reverse.
Nevertheless, with seven top winners, and not cashing any established winners except to change the lead, it would seem obvious that the spade suit offers far, far greater hope than the heart. The heart suit looks so anemic compared to the rather robust 7-card spade holding with 3 of the top five cards vs. two of the top 7 in hearts! So I would say that that clearly is declarer's first order of business. Yes, if he guessed right on the ace of spades at trick two, his troubles would be over. He would simply knock out the ace of hearts for a ninth winner.
The bottom line, I believe, is twofold: do not cash out your top clubs and uncover club tricks for the defense until you've got a 9th winner, and secondly, the spade suit clearly shows more potential for picking up the necessary winners than does the heart.
I just about had to throw in the towel on this one. Where some hands can be edited in 5 or 10 minutes, I kept coming back to this one over a three-day period. Try as I might, there just seems no ironclad line that leads to 9 winners without benefit of hindsight. And sometimes a hand can be analyzed to death, which I try to avoid.
I might have deleted it. After all, I have plenty of hands. Still, I thought I'd let it stand for what it says. Since almost half the field made 3 no, I think that tells us one thing, which is that if declarer has no clear path to 9 tricks, neither does the defense have one to 5! The bottom line being, I believe, that if declarer goes for a 9th winner, somehow, anyhow, rather than cashing out, there's a fair chance that he'll stumble into 9 before the defense stumbles into 5.