Four-Card Suits! Four-Card Suits!


J
A 9 5
K J 6 4 3 2
5 4 3
A Q 9 8 6 4 K 10 7 5 3 2
7 6 Q J 8 4
9 7
K 10 7 6 9 2
------
K 10 3 2
A Q 10 8 5 Opening lead: A of spades
A Q J 8 Contract: 6 diamonds

I rather prefer the hands where a fair number of declarers or defenders have screwed up. After all, if only one person did, who knows if it's some novice and I'm beating a drum about an error too obvious for the general reader to make. But here I made an exception before checking to see if this person's self-ranking is "novice", partly because the defender touched on one of my favorite topics, and partly because he committed one of the most baffling of errors, which I've referred to before and which I'll get to shortly.
The contract was six diamonds and there was some wild bidding here, including 7 diamonds when six won't make and beyond that, 7 spade sacrifices when they could have had their opponents down two. Actually, there were two defenders who allowed 6 diamonds to make here, but one case was so bizarre, it can only be attributed to a mismouse, to wit: at trick 12, declarer led a low heart to the A 9, while East sat with a guarded queen behind dummy. Now declarer finessed the 9 and East ducked! Since this was the last card of trick 12 and there are no decisions to make on trick 13, I presume the OKBridge computer just finished out the hand before anyone could say miss----. Anyway, the contract stood as made.
But the other defender made a conscious decision that handed over that high-level contract in a way that could hardly have been a mismouse. Opening lead the ace of spades, ruffed by declarer, who now took two rounds of trump, West sluffing the 6 of clubs on the second round. The six of clubs! West has five totally useless spades -- count 'em -- and he chooses to discard from that very valuable 4-card club holding, not when he feels squeezed a little too early, but at his very first opportunity to discard anything!
That's one of my favorite topics, and I've referred before to the phenomenon of that valuable card in a 4-card holding shooting out at one's first opportunity to discard. I just don't understand it. Declarer has no spades in either hand, not to mention East's horde in that suit and West discards the suit that would have inhibited the slam. I rather suspect that West looked at the 3 clubs in dummy and thought the fourth-round wasn't going to win anything with all those trump. Well, he may have been right about the fourth round not winning a trick, but he'd have been wrong in supposing it wasn't worth a trick by inhibiting the sluff of a heart.
Could West have known that declarer had that holding? No, of course not. But he doesn't need to know. What he should know, however, is that the spades are totally useless on that hand when declarer has none in either hand. As for the hearts, they don't look very prepossessing, but they might be useful as exit cards. So you save them until the last spade is gone and then the hearts, though even if declarer runs all his diamonds (after taking the club hook), that would mean only five discards, which is the number of spades West has.

On the club lead from dummy, the defender who played the low heart under the nine played the 9 of clubs. This led me to envision a strip-and-endplay. Declarer cashes two hearts after two rounds of trump, and then on a club lead, East playing the 9, a finesse of the queen into the king endplays West. He would either have to give a sluff-and-ruff or lead into declarer's A J 8 tenace. Of course that's a pie-in-the-sky line of play. Declarer would be embarrassed if he uncovered a heart winner in West's hand while clubs were splitting 3-3. And it's not one I would recommend. Still, I think it worth pointing out that the 9 has some value there, even on a doubleton. If East simply goes low, West has an exit on that finesse with a low club if he has no more hearts.
Could declarer counteract that 9 by going up with the ace and continuing with the queen of clubs? If West takes that, yes, he would be endplayed. But he'd have a counter to that, which is to duck the queen of clubs, and now he's got a K 10 tenace over the jack, instead of winning and leading into the J 8 tenace.

Now it only remains for me to see if I've been belaboring the play of a novice. I doubt it. Nope. I didn't think so. This player didn't give an OKBridge ranking but does tell us he/she is a Silver Life Master. Why didn't I think it was a novice? Because none of them are. "Intermediate" isn't terribly rare, but I'd say at least 75%, maybe 80 to 85% of those who blunder in incomprehensible ways tell us they're either advanced or expert!