A Rather Amazing Hand


A Q 10 7 4
Q
Q 9 4 3
K J 8
K 8 J 9 6 3 2
6 3 K J 8 7
A K J 10 7 6 8 5 2
9 4 2 3
5
A 10 9 5 4 2
------ Contract: 6 clubs
A Q 10 7 6 5 Opening lead: A of diamonds

This was an amazing hand, both for its inherent complexities and for what various pairs did with it. Seventeen made six clubs on the button while 2 picked up an overtrick. On the obverse side, seven went down one (one of 'em doubled with a chance for a top board), while two went down more than one in 7 clubs, several went down in five clubs, one of them down two, turning a slam potential into a partial except that the bid wasn't a partial.
Now there are three ways of making 6 clubs on the hand and no way, I feel safe in saying, to make 7 without a defensive error or gift (one defender made an error, while the other led a spade on opening lead, which allowed 13 tricks, but wasn't quite in the same category as an error). (The spade opening lead, whereby you don't need the finesse, allows declarer to ruff three rounds of hearts, establishing the suit, returning to the closed hand by three low diamond ruffs, the last allowing declarer to draw the 3-1 clubs. The diamond opening lead wipes out a key re-entry.) Let me take two ways to make 6 on a finesse, neither of which had many acolytes, before launching into the commonest attack and what went wrong.
First, you can make 6 on a crossruff (and no club opening lead, which few were getting). Now you may think of crossruffs primarily as exploiting a balanced holding, but the essence of a crossruff is rather to use your trump separately. We note that we have the distribution that allows that. Then we count our winners. We have 9 trump, meaning we'll need three side-suit winners, which means we must take the spade hook and it must be successful. And one last hurdle: we almost always have a few low trump we've got to push through, and can we do that here? And the answer, particularly when West bid diamonds, as many did, is yes. Hence:
Ruff opening diamond lead, take the spade hook, cash the ace, sluffing a heart, and now start your crossruff: A of hearts, ruff a heart, ruff a diamond, ruff a heart, ruff a diamond. Your crossruff is substantially complete at that point. You got your last straggler through without mishap. You have won two spade tricks, one heart, three diamond ruffs in the closed hand and two heart ruffs in dummy. That's eight tricks, and you're on a high crossruff with the K of clubs in dummy and three top trump in the closed hand. You now ruff another heart and claim, conceding a heart at the end, which will, of course, be taken by a defensive trump. It works, but it's not being recommended here. If the finesse is off, you're in trouble, and you have safer paths to 12 tricks.
Another way that works is a heart hook. Lead the Q and push it through if uncovered. You now need ruff only one heart, whether covered or not. How do I figure? Okay, if covered, you win, of course, ruff a heart, and draw trump, at which point you're looking at 10 9 5 4 in hearts, while East has J 8 and it should be clear that you can knock out the J of hearts, capture the 8 and run 'em. Or if not covered, the Q holds, you come to the closed hand and ruff a heart, draw trump, cash the A of hearts and concede a trick to the K. In each case, you haven't expended a lot of trump to reach the closed hand and can knock out that remaining heart honor while holding trump by which you regain the lead. This works on a trump opening lead, since you'll be ruffing hearts only once.
For that was the key point among those who set out to ruff hearts. Ruff the diamond lead, cash the ace of hearts, ruff a heart, ruff a diamond, ruff a heart and . . . here is the moment of truth. The hand would look like this:

A Q 10 7 4
------
Q 9
K
K 8 J 9 6 3 2
------ K
A J 10 8
9 4 2 3
5
10 9 5
------
A Q 10 7

And what do you do? The hand would have been a cinch for 7 if hearts had split 3-3 (which know at the point wasn't going to happen) and would still be a cinch if clubs split 2-2, which you don't know about yet. Do you want to play for 2-2 clubs? The odds actually favor a 3-1 over a 2-2, but it's not a matter of the odds, for we're not talking about making your contract vs. going down. We're talking about making your contract without an overtrick vs. an overtrick. And when I tell you the scoring, nobody's going to argue for a line that seeks an overtrick. The two who made an overtrick got 11.l IMP's, while those without an overtrick got 10.83. Not three-tenths of an IMP difference between 'em. And yet, this is substantially (though doubtless not consciously) what all those declarers who went down in 6 did: they went for a fourth ruff of hearts. Declarer at the above layout had a guaranteed contract on clubs no worse than 3-1. He should overtake the K of clubs, draw trump, lose a heart to East and claim, regaining the lead with the 7 of clubs. No finesses necessary. Instead, declarers would ruff a diamond with the last low one and ruff out the last heart, leading to this:
A Q 10 7 4
------
Q
------
K J 9 6 3 2
------ ------
A J ------
9 4 2 3
5
10 9
------
A Q 10

Now that they've cleared the heart suit, how do they return to the closed hand? It turns out that they can't use those established hearts with one less trump than West! They now could not make that marvelous contract. If declarer cashes two rounds of trump (looking for a 2-2 split, naturally), West can ruff a heart lead and cash the A of diamonds. If instead, declarer cashes one round of trump and tries to force West with a heart lead, (which would be ridiculous in view of the possibility of a 2-2 split, but anyway), West ruffs, and forces declarer right back with a diamond lead and West now holds the last trump. And for what? For a measly overtrick, not worth three-tenths of an IMP?
One declarer did content himself with two heart ruffs and now played the K of clubs -- without overtaking! My first thought was, Oh, why didn't he overtake? The 7's as good as an A when all trump are out. When a re-entry was so important as was stopping at two heart ruffs, why did he feel he had to play a low club on the king? Because of a possible 4-0 split? Who can say?
Anyway it was his undoing. He now ruffs a diamond with the 10, draws West's two trump with the Q J, knocks out the K of hearts and he's finished. Declarer has no access to his established hearts. But wait a minute! Wouldn't East be thrown-in then and forced to lead into the spade tenace on his right? It would seem so if declarer hadn't touched his spades and I can only presume that the ace of spades had been cashed. For I confess that I didn't make any notation at the time that declarer was still alive and do remember the declarer who rightly played the K of clubs -- and failed to overtake. The play was rightly geared to ruffing out the heart suit, but should also have been geared to having an entry to them when all trump were out.
Oh, and by the way, I forgot to mention when discussing the scoring, that down one was minus 10 IMP's. So you're talking about a roughly 20 IMP swing if clubs are 3-1 (in going for that third heart ruff) vs. a gain of 3/10ths of an IMP if they are 2-2. Worth it? Well, of course no one was consciously weighing a 20-IMP swing vs. three-tenths. But they were sure as shootin' going for an overtrick, for I don't know how else you would explain that ruffing out of East's last heart when it was a trick they could easily give up. It was a case of saying, "Since I can ruff the hearts out, then I shall," without looking to entries back to the closed hand. Hey, people. You were in six (with a few exceptions). You can afford the loss of one trick. (Those in 7 rightly played for the 2-2 clubs, their only chance. You don't accept down one in grand slam when there's any chance to make.)

The crux of this hand is the forcing game. It's not your usual distribution for a forcing game with a powerful 9-card trump suit, six in the long hand vs. only 3 in the defenders' long hand and declarer's need to lose the lead only once. No, not your usual, but that's what it amounts to. Further, it was declarers who were administering the coup de grace to themselves, the forcing play that queered the contract in seven cases, one of 'em doubled for a juicy top if he'd just said, Hey, I need to make this contract a lot more than I need an overtrick! But there were also several defenders who didn't seem to appreciate the forcing game, one disastrously so.
I'll start with the most excusable, the West whose opening lead was a spade. Since the opening lead is generally considered the most difficult of defensive decisions to make, you might want to give him a pass. But he was looking at a powerful diamond suit, where the lead of the A was hardly likely to do the defense any harm. The second defender was the one who got a heart trick at trick 2 as declarer led low to the queen! A diamond return would have cut declarer down to one low club (he must keep the three top honors in the closed hand for drawing trump), and hence lacking the entries needed to ruff two hearts and get back to three top honors. This one led a club and if declarer had simply won it in the closed hand and ruffed a heart, he now could come back with one diamond, ruff another heart, come back with another diamond, draw trump and claim. But declarer let the lead ride to the J and so was in the wrong hand for ruffing two hearts! So there were three consecutive errors here: declarer gave the defense a chance to beat him by the puzzlling lead toward the Q of hearts. East then gave declarer a chance for his contract by leading a trump instead of a diamond. Declarer won that lead in dummy and now can't ruff out two hearts (productively).
But the most disastrous overlooking of the forcing game was the play that didn't merely allow an overtrick (a fleabite) but also allowed trick 12 when declarer was on a path for down one. This declarer, like several of his peers, was intent on ruffing out that fourth round of hearts, which he did. Yet he was looking at an overtrick. How come, I wondered? How come his three honors held up after that ruff of the fourth round of hearts when the re-entry should have cut him down to one less trump than West? So I went back and found: On the fourth round of hearts which declarer is evidently going to ruff with the K, West ruffed first with the deuce! Oh, that was expensive, and completely off the wall. It just had no rhyme or reason to it. Declarer is evidently going to ruff that heart lead (for if hearts are now established, why is he continuing the suit?) Further, even if declarer is going to push the heart through, and let's say it is high and he doesn't ruff, there's nothing he can sluff from dummy that would do the defense any harm. It was just a pointless play by a defender who evidently didn't think his three small trump could do declarer in.
Could West have surmised that declarer would have difficulty if he'd held onto his three trump? I'll have to say yes, at least to the point of suspecting it. Declarer at that point had ruffed three diamonds in the closed hand. How many trump do you think he's got, for heaven's sake? Further, if he does ruff, West should see that he's going to have trouble getting back. Dummy will have no hearts or clubs at the end of the trick. West will have the high diamond, and can see the ace of spades in dummy while he holds the K. How's declarer going to get back to draw trump? It shouldn't be difficult to see that if declarer has to ruff to return to the closed hand, he might wind up with fewer trump than West, which would have been his undoing. [How come that incautious play cost two tricks, when West only gave up one card? That's because declarer needs to cash two long hearts, which West allowed him to do. Without that play, declarer doesn't get to cash either one.]

Then I got to thinking. There was one group of declarers whose play I hadn't looked at, to wit, those who made without an overtrick. If three defenders hadn't appreciated the value of the forcing game, I began to wonder just how many of the successful declarers had made the contract entirely on their own steam and how many on a defensive error. But when I went back, the hand had been wiped out. It was less than a day after I'd looked at it, but about 7 or so days were wiped out and I had no access to the play of those declarers.