The other day an interesting hand came up for defence and play at our table during our weekend competitions. The bidding by the opponents was as under:
Holding the following cards as west I led JS from The trump lead was tempting to minimise any cross ruff but the giving away of a cheap trick was a bigger fear. Anyway the dummy came down on my left as under:
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AK4 J874 75 A863
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The declarer took it in dummy with KS, played a diamond to his KD, cashed AH to get the bad news of 5 trumps with me. He played to the AC in dummy and a diamond to my partner's ace who put him back with the AS in dummy and back to hand with QS. Thereafter he played QD from hand. Take it from there. How do you defend? You have 4 choices (i) either to ruff low, (ii) to ruff with 10H, (iii) to ruff with QH, (iv) not to ruff at all.
Lets take the last option first not ruffing at all, declarer discards a club at trick 8 but what do you discard - obviously the 10S. Declarer puts you in with KC (Trick 9). Left with all trumps intact Q1053. You choice? Low trump or 10H or QH.
Remember dummy is sitting with J87 and club to declarer's K96 and a diamond. A low heart return, dummy wins, declarer ruffs clubs with KH and promotes his JH for the three tricks required on ruffing diamonds. Similarly 10H from you goes to J, club ruff with KH and diamond return promotes 8H in dummy. If QH from you from Q1053, he takes with KH and all you can get is only the 10H as J8 is above you. So we resort back to the remaining 3 choices of ruffing declarer's, QD with either a low one or 10H or QH. Ruffing with QH will not help as even if you exit with 10S after KC, declarer ruffs in dummy with 7H, club ruff with KH and traps your 10H under dummy's J8. If after ruffing with QH and KC you exit with a low heart the result is the same. Declarer takes it with the 9 in hand, ruffs a diamond in dummy with 8H. Ruffs clubs with KH and his JH is good. Suppose now of the remaining 2 choices you ruff with a low one (much better than 10H as I ruffed) to be over ruffed by 7H in dummy leaving you on lead with KC with 10S and Q10X of trumps.
The result will be no different. You will be restricted to only one trick. If you play 10S - ruffed in hand, for the 8th tricks with JH and KH being taken separately on club and diamond ruffs. If you play trumps instead, result will be the same whether you play 10H or QH.
Bridge is a funny game and for a long time my team mates could not comprehend how with a 5 carder headed by Q10532 could we not win 2 trump tricks to down the contract. Obviously we had gone down in the other room not because of a super duper defence but perhaps because of poor timing in play.
As I said in Bridge, funny things happen. Sure tricks vanish in thin air with the proper timing technique. At our table declarer's timing no doubt was excellent. But there is always more to it than meets the eye. Can you spot the super duper far sighted defence required for downing the contract and definitely a killing one? You see when declarer plays to the AC, to avoid the end play with KC forcing you to play from hand to one's disadvantage, the killing defence required was jettisoning the KC under it. Once that is made, the club, lead goes to partner's Q at trick 9 and a club return from him breaks the jinx. Now there is no way declarer can stop you from scoring 2 trump tricks as dummy has a club forcing declarer to ruff with KH otherwise you over ruff with 10 and get your QH to down the contract. But that jettison of KC was difficult a trick 3 or even at trick 5 or 6 for fear that what if declarer held the QC from a holding of 3 instead of 2 with diamonds being 3. Then jettisoning KC would be throwing a sure trick. But inspiring defences are made at Bridge as much as good timing play that was made at our table.
Yet it would not have been difficult to jettison KC had partner been far sighted enough to foresee that an end play could allow declarer to run away with the contract. Partner was holding a 5 carder club to the QJ and 5, diamonds to the A10. His first discard on the trump ace was a high diamond. Obviously he wanted to show that his diamonds were better, headed by the ace but that was an illusion for declarer had already taken KD earlier than the trump ace. Now the guide to partner in defence was to give either a low diamond or high club to show some club values - in this case obviously the queen. Had he done so, or failing that, even if he had thrown the CQ under the ace to promise the JC, it would certainly have facilitated an early jettison of the KC from me. The inspiring defence was there for the taking. It was all up to us to find that chink in the armour.
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N E S W
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1C P 1H P
2H P 4H P
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ALL PASS
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J1054
Q10532
J9
K5
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