Ne Touche Pas Les Coeurs


Don't Touch the Hearts

Q J 9 8
A J 10 4
A K 5
8 3
7 6 5 3 2 10 4
8 3 2 Q 9 7 5
J 10 8 6 4
J 7 6 5 K 4 2
A K
K 6
Q 9 7 5 2 Opening lead: various
A Q 10 9 Contract: 6 no, 6 diamonds

A couple were in 6 diamonds, a couple in 6 no, but either should make with ease -- with an overtrick. But I have four printouts, with opening lead 3 times a spade, once a diamond, where declarers managed to go down. There's nothing tricky here. There's just elementary counting and watching your entries. Let's say you get a spade lead. Well, first we count. Four spades, that's for sure and two hearts, and, well, are we going to get four diamonds or 5? If only 4, we'll have to take a finesse in clubs, but first we wanna see if the suit breaks 3-2 -- or, as it does conveniently enough, with a marked finesse.
In no trump, the first thing I'd do would be to unblock the spades and the second would be to test diamonds to see where I stood, and when West shows out on the second round, after having played the J, I now have a marked finesse -- and not so incidentally, good communication in hearts. Now is the time to take a club hook. It doesn't matter whether it wins or loses. You've got your contract. When it wins, then I'd come back to the A of hearts, cash the top spades, take my marked finesse in diamonds etc for 13 tricks.
Where did declarers go wrong? Well, through simple carelessness. There's really no other way to play the hand (though it would be tolerable, I guess, if you neglected to try the club hook when safe and after finding that West has 5 spades, felt it would be foolhardy). Okay, no overtrick. But you'd have your contract. Anyway, here's one in 6 no: low diamond from the other side of the table, cash the second diamond honor, unblock spades, finesse the J of hearts into the queen! Finesse into the queen! Is it hindsight that makes me say EEEK! No, not hindsight. You have good communication in the heart suit for doing everything you wanna do. The club hook is just as likely to work (and it won't be a disaster if it doesn't). But the hearts are too valuable for communication. For now your only entry to the unblocked spades and the diamond hook is by way of overtaking the K of hearts! But wait. There's worse: heart return, taken by the K! Taken by the king! Now he has no entry to the ace, no entry to the spades, no entry to the diamond finesse, the marked diamond finesse (forget the club hook, now). Since he had the 10 of hearts and the capability of a diamond hook for 5 tricks there, a simple overtaking of the K of hearts would still have afforded him his contract with 5 diamonds, two hearts, 4 spades and a club. But at that point, he cashed his A of clubs and led the 10 to the K, won the club return, lost a club to the J and then did get his A of hearts and next two spades at last, down two.
Another: Opening spade lead, cash top diamonds and now with the diamond finesse beckoning, or even the Q of clubs, this declarer finessed into the J of clubs! Well, I won't go through the slaughter (down 3). Suffice it to say that it was a simple case of counting: declarer has twelve winners aside from the club hook, so he doesn't want to finesse into the J of clubs but take a simple 50% finesse against the K. Didn't he see the J of diamonds fall? Even if he didn't, it would pay him to continue diamonds to establish the 5th, and then, by simple count, he'd see that he could make his contract with an overtrick on a successful finesse against the club king!
Here's one in six diamonds, which should play exactly like no trump, since you've got all top winners and don't need a trump stopper. Opening spade lead, top two diamonds, finesse the 9, cash the queen, sluffing the 3 of clubs!, second spade honor, K of hearts. Oh, oh. The K of hearts. You've got good communication in hearts. From this hand to that. Keep that communication. Four rounds of trump? Did he not see that the hand plays like no trump? Anyway, after cashing the K of hearts, he finessed into the Q! Is that finesse any less likely to succeed than the clubs? It doesn't matter how likely it is to succeed. He doesn't need it and the club hook is only for an overtrick. I say again, keep the suit with communication when you have other fish to fry, other suits to exploit. Now he has no entry to his ace of hearts, nor to the top spades! Oh me.
One more: Opening spade lead to the Q and A. To the Q and A! We can see it won't hurt him because the 10 falls short, but it still has to be about the most outrageous squandering of an honor I've seen. What on earth was the Q for? I've seen the Q played from Q J x when the closed hand has a stiff ace. Okay, you try to draw the K. But here there is no utility to playing that Q, a totally inexplicable play that appears to set the tone for the rest of the hand. A, K of diamonds, heart to the K. Heart to the king! Why on earth is that necessary when you're going to want that king later. But sure 'nuff, now came a finesse into the Q, again meaning no access to the top spades. Well, actually, he did, for he was in diamonds and hadn't cashed the 3rd diamond in that hand. But that's not all to his credit. In a diamond contract that plays like no trump, he abandoned trump after two rounds, though he needed to take a marked finesse . . .which he cannot take if he uses his 3 of diamonds for an entry to the spades. But this declarer, notwithstanding the outstanding trump, was still alive. He cashed the A of hearts. Oh-oh. He didn't cash the ace of hearts, but ruffed it though his RHO followed suit! Oh, he wasn't alive at trick 11. I didn't see that he had only trump in the closed hand. He'd used up the 3 of trump to ruff the third round of clubs.
Oh, that's too much of a mish-mash to continue with. I neglected to look up their self-ranking. But they all played like novices. But anyway I only wanted to establish how simply the hand plays out with a simple count. The J of diamonds falls and that hand is out of diamonds on the second round?

The day after typing the above, I came across two more declarers who had similarly gone down. That seemed so improbable that I had to check the declarers' names to make sure they weren't duplicates, but no, they were new. So first I changed the title to the above. Don't Touch the Hearts. Well, not until you must, of course. Why not? Well, hearts are the only suit where you have instant communication back and forth. In spades you have only communication to the A K, and indeed will want to unblock that suit right away. Clubs and diamonds both require leading from the dummy toward the closed hand, and indeed, diamonds are the suit you want to establish early as offering how many winners and so is not a suit you want to save for communication. Only hearts offer instant communication from here to there from either hand. Indeed, I look upon the heart suit as so valuable in that regard that though a heart lead would have given a free finesse for the queen, I think declarers were lucky not to get a heart opening lead.
And another thing struck me this morning about the defeated declarers. Two of the four had taken the heart finesse into the queen on the first round of the suit after having cashed the top diamonds! Do you see what I'm driving at? No, it's not that they should have cashed the K first to guard against a stiff Q. Rather it's that had the finesse worked, their only entry to dummy would have been overtaking the K! Talk about a low percentage finesse! Oh, the actual finesse had a 50% chance of success. But it had a zero percent chance of developing a heart winner! And that's not a finesse to take. But of course, even those who'd cashed the K before finessing weren't pursuing their best interests when they had a cold 12 tricks without that heart finesse. The club hook is recommended not because one can see it works but because it doesn't risk anything if you do it before spades are drawn while retaining your heart communication.
Actually, it wouldn't have cost if taken after running spades, but it would have been foolhardy then when West has a spare spade. For that would have involved risking the contract for a mere overtrick. Hence, lemme go over the essence of the hand again, which is simply that you first unblock the spades, then go to your diamonds to see how the suit is splitting, and when you are assured of the maximum on the second lead, then take the club hook, knowing that even if it loses, you have an entry back to the remaining spades (by way of hearts) and the marked finesse in diamonds. The club hook may not offer a greater chance of success, as a finesse, than the heart hook, but it doesn't involve wiping out communication which the heart hook so infamously did.
When the club hook holds, it's cash-out time. You can cash the A of clubs and K of hearts if you wish, or save 'em. Go to dummy, cash the top spades, sluffing two clubs, take your marked finesse in diamonds and claim. Perhaps not a hand we'd expect a rank novice to bring home but one that is amenable to a simple count of top winners, guarding your entries, taking a risk-free finesse and cashing out. One that shouldn't have been terribly demanding of anyone with, call it, six months of bridge play behind him.