Don't Sneer at the Minors


A K 3 2
A 7
10
K Q 10 8 5 4
9 8 6 J 10 7 5
J 3 2 Q 10 4
K Q J 8 9 6 5 4 3 2
9 7 3 ------
Q 4
K 9 8 6 5
A 7 Open lead: K of dia vs. NT, club vs. 6 hrts
A J 6 2 Contract: 6 hrts, 6 no trump, 7 no

It's a laydown grand in clubs and an easy little slam in no trump. But one pair wound up in an unmakable 6 hearts, a Lightner Double inviting a club opening lead on this bidding:

WestNorthEastSouth
Pass 1 Pass 1
Pass 1 Pass 3
Pass 4 NT Pass 5 *
Pass 5 Pass 6
PassPass DblAll pass
* alerted

Of course you want to give serious attention to the majors when you have a choice of trump suits, but a 10-card suit vs. a 7? Don't sneer at the minors! Of course there's no absolute cutoff as to what works. Seven-card holdings are bound to pop up as the most viable trump suit (and better than no trump) from time to time. But you'd do well to stick to the conventional wisdom that 8 cards or more are needed for a clear dominance in the trump suit. Much like getting your trump out quickly and covering an honor, second hand low, etc., you'd do well to lean toward the conventional wisdom until you get real good and can spot the times when conventional wisdom won't work.
The alerted 5 club response to 4 NT is doubtless Roman Key Card, 0 or 3 aces, counting the K of trump as an ace. The jump rebid of 3 hearts on a K 9 five-card suit is absurd. But North, with a meagre fit, knowing his side holds all the aces might well have chanced 6 no, all the more so with that Lightner double.
There's not much to the play of the hand here, except for the declarer making 7 no trump. Seven no? Do you see where that 13th winner is coming from? Is there a double squeeze here? Lemme see: Declarer takes the opening lead and runs 6 clubs, sluffing two hearts from the closed hand. East discards all his diamonds, but on the last club must give up his third heart, since he must keep four spades. And West? He can find temporary respite in throwing useless spades. But on the run of three spades (amounting to 10 tricks), West cannot wind up with the last diamond guard and three hearts. Does that mean he is he squeezed?
No, he's not squeezed. If you think so, you're overlooking one thing: What does declarer sluff on the third round of spades? For indeed, the closed hand is squeezed before West, and that defender need only toss the same suit as declarer does to hold the setting trick. In real life, West held onto the useless Q of diamonds after declarer tossed the 7, and declarer won the last trick with the 9 of hearts. An awfully big swing.
Could West have worked out the situation? Well, of course. If he notes his partner's play of six diamonds on the first six tricks, he would have a pretty good idea of the diamond distribution, and then certainty when the 7 of diamonds is discarded. The Q of diamonds is completely useless at that point.
There is another rule-of-thumb I might adduce, though it's by no means comparable to the certainty of counting out the diamonds: discard the suit declarer does. That's if you haven't been watching closely. It's not guaranteed to work (at times you may be subject to a legitimate squeeze, in which case nothing works, and at others, a clever declarer may have discarded a key card early, so that on the supposed squeeze card, he makes an innocuous discard (here, sluffing the 7 of diamonds on the 5th round of clubs and hence a heart on the third round of spades). Then the rule-of-thumb wouldn't work. Nevertheless, declarers like defenders tend to sluff their useless cards first and then when matters get tight, give up a card they'd dearly love to keep. And so I say, if you haven't been watching, matching declarer's suit is as likely as anything or likelier to be right.


I had another case where a 10-card minor on a 6-4 split was eschewed in favor of a 5-2 heart fit, but seem to have misplaced it. Suffice it to say that this was the heart suit:
A J
9 8 5 4 3

and that two pairs located the 6-4 diamonds, where slam was a laydown, and then reverted to hearts, where they couldn't even make game. This was on a jump in hearts by one North player on A J, and by a 4 heart bid by another without a jump. 'Nuff said? Those 5-2 fits, except perhaps when the suit is absolutely solid, are not recommended over 10 card minors, particularly at the slam level, where you don't have the one-trick cushion you have when weighing a major-suit game vs. a minor.