Hand of the day #123
The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff Opening Lead: You decide! In choosing an openi...
This conundrum was written by Patrick O'Connor and was originally published in the book, Demystifying Defense - you can find out all about it further down the page.
We are East. Our hand is:
South opens 1NT, partner passes and North raises to 3NT. All pass, partner leads the ♣5 and dummy comes down.
Lead: ♣5
Let’s look at the high-card points (HCP) around the table. Declarer has 15-17 for the 1NT, dummy has 11, so between them there are 26-28 HCP.
We have 8 HCP so how many does that leave for partner?
Partner has only 4-6 HCP, not very many. It is not a surprise that partner led a club because he must have at least four of them, but we would like a switch.
What suit would we like partner to switch to?
We would desperately like a heart switch because we could take four tricks there.
How can we get partner to switch to a heart? Should we encourage with the ♥10?
No, because partner will not have more than one trick so we need all four heart tricks to defeat the contract.
Which card should we play now?
Instead of encouraging with a heart we should play the ♦2, discouraging diamonds.
Declarer wins the first trick in hand with the ♣Q and leads another club, which partner wins with the ♣A.
We have to discard again. Which card should we play?
We must discard the ♠2, discouraging spades.
Partner gets the message that we don’t like diamonds or spades and duly switches to the ♥9 and we take four heart tricks, setting the contract.
Here is the full deal:
If we had discarded a heart we could not have set the contract.
Post Mortem
The principle of playing high to encourage and low to discourage applies to following suit to partner’s lead and also to discards when we cannot follow suit.
Negative discards are just as important as positive ones.
O’Connor addresses the hardest aspect of cardplay: defense. After carefully explaining the basic concepts, he takes the reader through forty problems, using an ‘over the shoulder’ style, and explaining every play as it is made. Beginners typically have more trouble with defense than any other part of the game, and this book will go a long way towards removing their unease.
Play leventhal discards with partner.