Entries! Entries


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Q 9 7 5 4
J 7 4
K J 10 8 6
K 10 9 Q 8 6 5 3
J 10 6 8 3 2
Q 10 9 8 3 2 5
9 A 5 3 2
A J 7 4 2
A K Vul: Both
A K 6 Contract: 6 clubs, 6 hearts, 6 no, 3 no
Q 7 4 Opening lead: various

We can see at a glance that 6 hearts can be beat, especially if a transfer bid on a 2 no opening put the club singleton on opening lead. We can also see that a spade lead would beat 6 no. So would a two-trick holdup in clubs by the defender with the ace. Declarer (without a spade lead in no trump) can run five heart winners and hit clubs for a couple of winners. But if East holds off until round 3, declarer will have no entry to the remaining clubs and must wind up with just 10 tricks: 5 hearts, a spade and 2 of both clubs & diamonds. The declarers here (at least those that I looked at) were all flummoxed by not caring for their entries (in no trump contracts), as described below.
When dummy comes down, what's the first thing you've got to do? And the answer must be unblock hearts! That will often be your first task (i.e., in a suit that represents tricks beyond the blocking cards), because that suit doesn't allow communication back and forth. You can get to the suit or suits that represent communication when you've finished that task. And the second? Why, knock out the ace of clubs, certainly. If East bites too soon, you should have 12 tricks. Even if he wisely holds up, those in 3 no should have an easy 10 winners for an overtrick. [Even those with a spade lead should pick up 10 tricks, for the suit blocks with the short spades. Take the Q of spades (on a spade lead), unblock hearts, etc. And on a spade from East, go low (though here it doesn't matter.) The defense picks up only two spades and a club.] Anyway, lemme see what went wrong.
Down 4 in six no? On a diamond lead that allowed the J to hold? This declarer should have had an easy 11 tricks (five hearts, 3 diamonds, 2 clubs and a spade). Only he neglected to unblock the hearts! Club to the queen at trick 2, club back to the 8, which held. Now he has no entry to the hearts, not even to the queen, not to mention the two long hearts on the 3-3 split.
Here's a down one (in 6 no) puzzler. Declarer unblocked, alrighty. His RHO took the second round of clubs. The opening lead wasn't a spade. So how come he didn't wind up with five hearts, 4 clubs, two diamonds and a spade? Lemme see. Oh! On the spade return from East after he'd taken his ace of clubs, declarer sluffed a heart from dummy! Like he needs three diamonds? The last trick was a low diamond to the queen. Should he have known to sluff a diamond? I'd say yes. A 3-3 split isn't so rare. No, there's a better reason why he should have sluffed the diamond. He can't make the contract without a 3-3 heart split! He can't make on 4-2 hearts even if the queen of diamonds falls short! So he must play for the 3-3 split.
Six clubs. Should make, shouldn't it? Lemme see. Well, the first declarer simply fiddle-faddled around too much. He ruffed a heart in dummy (played from the north hand), which doesn't seem too shabby a play, since hearts could easily be 4-2, except that he let himself get locked in dummy on the second round of the suit. After unblocking hearts, he led a club to the 10 (holding), ruffed a heart and cashed the queen of clubs! Cashed the queen of clubs! Had he noticed the 9 falling on the first round of the suit, he would have seen that he was not only safe in overtaking the queen, but that in not overtaking the queen, he's very unsafe. Now he ruffs a spade (drawing the K), cutting himself down to the same number of trump as his LHO (played from the North hand, remember) with the ace yet to be knocked out! A very unsafe play when he has all the top clubs down to the 6. Now the K of clubs is taken by the ace, a spade to the J, declarer sluffing a diamond, the A of spades, sluffing a heart, and now with the K of diamonds, he finally meets his Waterloo, but it wouldn't have mattered if he'd ruffed a spade to enter the closed hand, for that would have been his last trump while his LHO had one remaining. He simply cannot afford to cut down on the number of trump in the long hand.
Another case: Oh, oh, oh: I've inveighed against this several times in the past two weeks. Opening lead a diamond, the jack holding. Club to the Q, back to the K, low diamond to the K and a ruff! Well, I see that wasn't the lead of a singleton diamond, but from the 6-card holding. Still, I have cautioned the reader to be wary of the opponents' choice of suits in a trump contract. Be very suspicious of a singleton -- somewhere. More importantly, why? What need is there of cashing a diamond? Declarer always has access to the top diamonds, which is to say access to the A of spades on which to sluff a diamond. Had there been a good reason for cashing the second round of diamonds, I would hardly blame declarer for taking a chance on that second round of the suit where the opponents originally held 7 cards. But here it was a gratuitous risk to invite going down.
And now for the handful of people going down in 3 no, some down two! And none with a spade opening lead! I have been concentrating on slams lately, but was drawn to this by noting that a former partner, a soi-disant expert who always felt she should be instructing me, was down two. Was she a helpless dummy? I wondered. No, she was the declarer. So I printed out all the down two's and down 1's in 3 no, and this is what I found:
Remarkably, of the eight who went down in 3 no, seven made the same error, and it wasn't a failure to unblock hearts before attacking clubs! Only one declarer went down for that reason. Here's the mistake they made: Opening lead, sometimes a club, sometimes a diamond, allowing a third diamond winner, unblock the hearts, a second round of clubs to dummy, as East holds up but and then a third round of clubs. A third round of clubs! That's what did it. They didn't even get their queen of hearts. Those who got a diamond lead were down one (three diamond winners, two hearts, two clubs and a spade), while those who got a club lead were down two with one less diamond winner.
It's amazing that they didn't see that they'd have no access to the long hearts on that third club lead.
My reference to a partner who always felt she should be instructing me was not meant to suggest that the instruction should have been going in the other direction, per se. No, no. I think we learn from each other, and even if there is a significant disparity in skill, I regard it as a poor practice to say, substantially, "I should be instructing you, not you me."