Improve Your Play #06-10

IMPROVE YOUR PLAY
with Larry Matheny

As declarer it is important to be able to place the opponents' high cards. The bidding and the play of the hand will often provide the information you need. Here is a good example.

Scoring: IMPs (team)

Hand #10
Dlr	N
Vul	E-W

	9752
	AKQJ
	J104
	42

	A
	1076
	853
	AQJ965

	J1086
	985
	AQ2
	K87

	KQ43
	432
	K976
	103

West	North	East	South
	Pass	Pass	Pass
1	DBL	1NT	2
All Pass

BIDDING: This was a routine auction with both sides bidding strongly in their attempt to buy the contract. Perhaps East should have taken another call but instead decided to defend.

PLAY: West made an aggressive lead of the club ace. After receiving encouragement from his partner, West continued with a second club. After winning the king, East shifted to a low heart. With two clubs lost and at least one diamond to lose, declarer had to keep his trump losers to two. Before tackling trumps, declarer decided to find out more about the hand by leading the diamond jack from dummy. East covered with the queen and South won the king. It was now clear that West must hold the spade ace for his opening bid. Since this was a team game with overtricks of little value, South next played a low spade from his hand. While this may seem unusual, the only time declarer will lose three spade tricks is when the suit divides 4-1 (or an unlikely 5-0). Since West was marked with the ace, a low spade from hand protected against the ace being singleton.

South ended up losing only five tricks to score +110. Note that E-W would be down one in 3