An Interesting Hand
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 ------ |
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 K J 10 8 4 2 |
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 6 3 |
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 Q J 9 6 2 |
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| A 9 8 2 |
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10 5 4 |
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| 6 | |
5 3 |
| A K 10 8 7 5 | |
Q J 9 2 |
| K 7 | |
A 10 5 4 |
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|
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| K Q J 7 6 3 |
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A Q 9 7 |
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4 |
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8 3 | Vul: None |
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At first glance, you wouldn't think this would be a particularly interesting hand. N-S are cold for four hearts, while E-W have a nifty sacrifice at five diamonds. Five hearts would be beatable on three quick leads, of course. Against 5 diamonds, N-S will or will not find their way to ruff out the ace of spades at trick two for an eventual 4 tricks. The primary intererest would lie in the bidding, and the decisions here are too close to hector anyone for guessing wrong, missing the sac or bidding over the sac. And besides, not a few people in five hearts got a chance to make it, and what they did with that chance is what made the hand interesting. Only one person in 5 hearts made it -- the easy way, which I'll give in a minute -- while four others were given a chance that they simply didn't capitalize on.
Here is what happened: Opening diamond lead, continued and ruffed. Now how many clubs can declarer sluff from dummy on the spades under most favorable conditions? Yes, the answer is four, since declarer will have to ruff twice. Further, he's going to have to start before drawing trump, since he's been cut down to three hearts in the closed hand.
Hence: ruffing finesse with K of spades. You must push it through if uncovered. If covered? Ruff, back on a trump lead, ruff a spade, back on a trump lead, run four spades, sluffing four clubs. You should lose only one club and one diamond.
Two declarers led the king of spades and ruffed when it wasn't covered, a practice I've inveighed against elsewhere. You've got to decide what finesses you're going to take, and not let the opponents help you make your decision. They're not there to help you. Pushing the uncovered K through risks little to gain a lot, as discussed below. After that ruff, i.e., of an uncovered K, declarer can't make 5 hearts.
In the other direction, one declarer in five hearts, doubled, led the king and it was covered! Now he didn't even have to take any risks, make any real decisions.
For those who don't get taken to the cleaners on the first three tricks, the ruffing finesse becomes a matter of making or going down two, and the latter is such a small penalty to pay in comparison with what they stood to gain -- an extra 50 points for those not doubled vs. 450 to be gained -- that there is no excuse for not giving it a try. For those doubled, the difference would have been an extra 200 if down two vs. 650 for making, a smaller ratio, but still a significant difference for a 50% finesse.
The third declarer took his two rounds of trump after ruffing the second round of diamonds, and led clubs himself! Those powerful spades might as well not have existed. Declarer can lead twice toward the Q J 9 6 2 of clubs, establishing one winner, ruffing the 4th round of the suit for a good dummy. Who needs spades? Well, nobody who's comfortable going down one unnecessarily, but you do if you wanna make five.
And the fourth declarer? This one ruffed the second round of diamonds, took two rounds of trump, led the king of spades and . . . do you see what he did wrong? He'd already blown the hand at that point. They gave him a chance and he gave it right back. How's he gonna get back to ruff spades a second time, then back again to cash them after that?
How many sluffs do you have coming on a 6-2 holding, a 6-1, a 6-0? And the answer is, you have as many as the differential between the two hands, minus any rounds that you ruff. So how many sluffs do we have coming on the spade suit? Ah, you got it. We must ruff the ace, and we must ruff the 9, as the 10 falls. We have 6-0 spades, so that means we have four sluffs coming. That's not quite all there is to it. We're going to need access to the long spades, we can't afford to lose the lead, and we must have a trump left in dummy for this to be meaningful, for there's no advantage to sluffing four clubs if you can't get a ruff. But if we can sluff four clubs, we can ruff a club in dummy and make our contract.
So this declarer has queered his opportunity by not preparing for the re-entries he would need. The opponents have the A 9 tenace after two rounds of spades. So declarer has to ruff twice and so will need two re-entries. He can't afford to draw trump -- except as a re-entry to his hand. Declarer must start spades at trick 3. He ruffs out one of the first three rounds, gets back with a trump lead, ruffs out the 9, gets back with a trump lead, and now can run spades, sluffing clubs. Actually, declarer has an extra entry here and can afford one round and start spades at trick 4. Ruff out the ace, get back on the second round of hearts, ruff out the 9 and get back on a 3rd round. Two ruffs and three rounds leave dummy with exactly one trump, which is all you need, and all you could use.
With five clubs in dummy and two in the closed hand (and pul-lenty of trump), the normal tendency is to think one can ruff out the third round even if A K 10 sit over the Q J 9. But a trick can be generated by sluffing from the long hand and subsequently ruffing the second round of clubs in dummy. That is, it can be generated if one is careful.