Some Serious Matchpoints


the War

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

Some serious matchpoints at issue here. Only one pair bid the spade slam, and nobody made fewer than 11 tricks. So the disparity between game bids generating 11, 12 and 13 tricks was quite pronounced. Plus 5? A puny 6.5%! Plus 6? A somewhat better 32.6% Plus 7? A very nice rosy 73.9%! And what should it make? Twelve tricks.
There are two suits at issue here, the handling of them, that is. One is spades, whether one goes for the drop on the basis of "Nine Never" or not. The other is hearts where both East and declarers were booting away a valuable trick. There's not much to discuss about the spade suit. If you cash the K first, you can't go wrong. If you cash the A first and get the Q or the J, the Law of Restricted Choice favors a finesse. Which obviously won't work here. As far as hearts go, East should cover the 10, saddling declarer with a club loser.
But the funny thing about the heart situation is that even when East failed to cover, declarers didn't always take advantage of his mistake for an extra 41 matchpoints. There were indeed about 3 different ways declarers booted away a non-cover. One declarer practically invited the cover by finessing the J first round! He couldn't spare the Q and leave the location of the J in doubt? So now when he went back to lead the 10, East hardly has any reason not to cover. Leading the 10 first round was the most productive. There are evidently a lot of players who can't bring themsleves to sacrifice their king for a card three steps lower.
But even on a non-cover a fair sprinkling of declarers couldn't convert that into a 13th trick. Several sluffed a diamond, third round. A diamond! What's that do for the hand? The diamond suit isn't a major player here. Well, actually, it could be on a heart lead. When I looked to see if you'd have enough entries to ruff out the 4-3 diamonds and cash the 5th, it looks as though you'd have sufficient entries if you could get a heart ruff. But on, say, a diamond lead, you'll need to use one of your entries to take the heart hook, so you'll be one short. A heart lead, however, would give you that finesse and a fourth lead (getting two diamond leads with the A).
Anyway, you want to sluff clubs, shorten clubs in dummy if you get that providential layout, the K onsides, guarded twice, not used to cover. And 2-2 hearts. What more could you ask for?
And a few got a non-cover, pushed the 10 through, finessed the J and now ruffed the Queen! Because they could ruff, they did ruff? But if you ruff a heart, you can't ruff a club. You can't even shorten clubs enough for a ruff anyway. They couldn't cash the A of hearts first to see if the K fell? That was costly. Forty-one matchpoints lost by declarers who didn't take advantage of the non-cover, forty-one matchpoints lost to the defense when declarers did take advantage of the non-cover.