You Should be Happy with the 4-0 Split!
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 A 9 4 |
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 10 6 4 |
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 A K 3 2 |
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 K Q 8 |
| K Q |
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J 8 7 6 5 2 |
| 9 7 2 |
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A K Q 5 3 |
| 9 7 6 4 |
|
------ |
| 9 7 3 2 |
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J 10 |
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10 3 |
|
|
J 8 |
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Q J 10 8 5 |
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|
A 6 5 4 |
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| West | North | East | South |
| |
1 |
Pass |
| Pass |
Dbl |
Pass |
2 |
| Pass |
3 |
Pass |
4 |
| All |
pass |
I once postulated that within some limits, you sould be happy for bad breaks. The first reason is that they lend a little spice to the game, contributing to the complexity that makes it represent a challenge. And the second reason is that -- if not too horrendous -- these are just the distributions that allow you to pull ahead of the so-so players. This was such a hand.
When I saw declarer had gone down one in 4 diamonds, my first thought was that she had pulled all trump before stopping to think and note that she was then dependent on a 3-3 club break, which wasn't there. However, that didn't prove to be the case. What she did was, well, far more complicated, making it take longer to go down.
Opening lead was the king of spades, taken with the ace. A low diamond went to the queen, revealing the 4-0 split, and another diamond went to the ace. And here's where declarer went wrong (though not irrevocably so). She led a spade to the 10 and queen. West promptly led a heart, East now led the jack of spades, and for a moment, I thought that would be the setting trick, but no, declarer ruffed with the 10, holding us off a little longer, as West sluffed a heart, and now declarer got around to clubs, playing them exactly as she should have two tricks earlier. King of clubs, queen, low to the ace, ruff a club with the 3.
The hand now looks like this. Declarer has lost only two tricks:
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------ |
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10 6 |
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K |
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------ |
| ------ |
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J |
| 9 |
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K Q |
| 9 7 |
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------ |
| ------ |
|
------ |
|
------ |
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|
J |
|
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J 8 |
|
|
------ |
| |
At this point, she can cash the king of diamonds and lead a heart, and she'd willy-nilly have the high diamond as West underruffs with the 9 on the last trick. But she had still another surprise -- well, two, actually. She led a heart at trick 11, not the king of diamonds. And now when East led another heart, declarer had her last chance, which for incomprehensible reasons she didn't take: she ruffs with the jack and wins the last trick with the king. But for unknown reasons, with the highest trump in dummy and the second highest in the closed hand, she ruffed with the 8, West overruffed with the 9 and declarer wound up using those two high trump on the last trick.
I think that what really went wrong was that declarer wasn't focussed. You can see at a glance that you've gotta lose a spade and two hearts. You don't have to feed those tricks to the defense. They'll take 'em soon enough. As for clubs, you expect to ruff the fourth round on an uneven break, except that, whoa! The 4-0 split means we won't have any trump left. That leaves us with two possibilities, to wit: that clubs split 3-3, in which case we're safe running three rounds, and that on uneven clubs, the hand with trump has the long clubs and cannot ruff, the actual case, of course. And if the hand with the short clubs ruffs in? Well, then, you can't make 4 diamonds. There's nothing more to the hand. The fiddle-faddling around didn't queer the contract exactly. We see that as late as trick 12(!!) declarer could still have made it. But there wasn't a clear focus from the beginning and finally it was fatal.