Winning the Battle and Losing . . .


the War

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

Two declarers here made their contract for the absolutely miserable score of 8 matchpoints! They made their contract without an overtrick while others were picking up two or even three. (I have no score for plus one overtrick and suspect that didn't happen.) Those with two overtricks scored 51.61% and those with three 82%! So much for feeling comfortable if your contract is in the bag, that is, when you have opportunities for more tricks.
Now a diamond opening lead puts declarer in a parlous condition, to be sure, though, paradoxically, it also puts him in a position for raking in 13 tricks! When I saw that the two declarers with the miserable MP score, my first thought was sympathy for getting the most threatening opening lead. If the club hook is off, poof! There goes your contract. But then I counted up the winners even with an even break in spades and I only got to 8! So where is there any future in hitting spades? If the club hook is off, it's off for everybody and though not everybody's getting a diamond opening lead, you can't hide behind the self-pity of saying, well, I got more effective defense than those guys. You bid the contract and you play to make, no?
Both declarers willy-nilly won the opening low diamond in dummy and immediately cashed dummy's top spades! What on earth is the point of that? To wipe out your only entries to the clubs should you get a favorable lie of the cards. Further, if that's not strange enough, one of the declarers then came to the A of hearts to take the club hook! By trick 5! For heaven's sake. If you're going to take the hook, why not two tricks earlier? It just made no sense whatever to wipe out the spade holding first. If the club hook is off at trick 5, the defense will run just as many diamonds as they could have if off at trick 3.
West covered the Q of clubs and now the suit is blocked. This is an instance where covering the first of equal honors works well by blocking the suit, thought West could also decline to cover either honor with the same effect. The other declarer pursued a slightly different path of continuing with the spades, cashing out the 4th round, delaying the club hook to the sixth round, where again, if it's off, the defense will cash only as many diamonds as they could have had the finesse been taken at trick 3. (Trick 2 is for transferring the lead to the closed hand.)
This West declined to touch either honor, and of course, declarer has no percentage in overtaking the J (which he did) since clubs are now dead. But with spades breaking and the finesse winning, each declarer had 9 winners in the form of two hearts, two clubs, four spades and a diamond.
It's not a pretty picture of either declarer. They come across as wanting to put off seeing their contract go ker-plunk if only for a couple of tricks. Had they chanced going down just two tricks earlier for one, three for the other (who incidentally would have uncovered a spade winner also on any spade break but the 3-3 that's there) -- had they chanced that finesse at their first opportunity, they would have wound up with 13 tricks and an 82% score, a leap of about 76 points for not being a scaredy-cat! And you think when your partner goes down on a contract he could have made he's kicking away a lot of points! Not that many, I'll warrant ye, well, by and large, not that many.
Incidentally, 4 spades with 2 overtricks (a miserable contract, to be sure, but there were a few there), declarers got 25.81! Please remember that 3 no and 12 winners brought in 51.61. So that's roughly 26 points for the 10-point difference in raw score! Double your money.