Going Both Ways

	3 2
	K J 7 4
	Q 8 4
	K 8 6 4
9 6 5 4		7
9		Q 6 3 2
K J 9 3 2		10 7 6 5
Q 10 5		A 7 3 2
	A K Q J 10 8
	A 10 8 5	Contract: 6 spades, 3 no
	A
	J 9	Opening lead: 9 of hts, 2 of hts resp.

I first thought of saving this hand for an illustration of one of those honors combinations where whoever initiates the suit loses (referring to clubs). Or so I thought. From there I went to see how a declarer had managed 12 tricks in hearts and discovered that East had blanked his A of clubs! Why would he blank an ace of clubs, I wondered to save the 10 7 of diamonds when there was a higher diamond in dummy? Well, actually, there wasn't a higher diamond in dummy, since declarer had pitched it on the run of spades, but the principle remains the same. If declarer didn't want that Q of diamonds, why would one wanna save a couple of cards like the 10 and 7? From there I went to wondering why anyone would blank an ace sitting over a king in dummy when you might know you wouldn't want to play the ace first round under certain circumstances. And from there the suitability of this category finally struck me.

But that's not all. When I went to see how many matchpoints that foolish decision had cost the defense (close to 90), I saw that someone else, playing in no trump from the North hand, had also made 12 tricks. So I took a gander at how that had happened, and discovered that the same principle applied! With only the J 9 of clubs showing in dummy and East (well, the West hand above), wanting to keep the K of diamonds understandably enough and the J of diamonds not so understandably enough when dummy shows two clubs and a stiff ace of diamonds, blanked his Q of clubs! That is, he blanked his queen of clubs to save two diamonds when dummy is showing a stiff ace of diamonds and two clubs. Declarer had run all his hearts and now spades at that point and it would have taken a Houdini to cash the ace of diamonds and work out another diamond lead.

So trick 11 went 9 of clubs from dummy, Q, K and A by LHO, and a club to the J and the A of diamonds took the last two tricks. This declarer wasn't in slam, as indicated above, but he got 88.89%! That was only 11.11 points less than the declarer who bid an "impossible" 6 hearts, helped in no little way by a free finesse on the opening lead and then a very, very foolish discard.

Keep the same number of cards in a suit as dummy shows! (when at all practical). It's not guaranteed to be profitable 100% of the time, but often -- often enough to be worth paying attention to. Here we had defenders from both sides of the table flouting that advice at some cost.