The squeeze play can be a fascinating affair and the most rewarding of all Bridge plays. Today's illustration is one such lesson in squeeze play.
The bidding is as under:
The opening lead is 9D.The contract of 6NT is a good one with the spade finesse likely to be on from the bidding. But as south, how do your manage 12 tricks? You can have 3 spades, 4 diamonds, 3 hearts, tricks and the club ace for 11 tricks. You are a trick short still. The chances of a singleton K of club dropping are remote.
As south how do you plan to make 6NT giving yourself the best chance in the assumption of the lie of the cards with the opponents cards placed as favourable for you as you want them. The overcall of 1S from west is of course of great help. With 29 combined points between NS, the rest of the points can easily be placed with west who surely holding SK with a minimum 5 carder spade, must also hold AH and KC - the two remaining key cards. If the KC, is not a singleton, west's likely holding should be a 5-3-3-2 with the Red Cards split either 3-3 or 4-2 - the only clue and inference on which you need to build that pyramid of hope and success for your little slam.
The black suit have the potential of yielding the extra trick, but these suits of the opponents appear to be well protected and hence to give you any chance they need to put under some sort of pressure if the declarer is to succeed in his slam contract.
A closer analysis reveals that you have no chance unless and until the heart ace is knocked out first at the earliest. So in line with this plan, after taking the DK in dummy, you lead a heart towards your J in hand, taken by west with the heart ace. West continues with the diamonds for you to take the ace. Of course, when you try the spade finesse of the Q, repeating it with the jack, west is shrewd enough to duck twice and save his king looking to the ace of spades 3 cards in the dummy. When east shows out on the second round, the 5-1 division in spades in confirmed.
Do you now see how south's chances for 12 tricks can develop? Yes there is only one hope - the criss-cross squeeze threatening west.
You see declarer has 7 red winners to go along with his 3 spade winners leaving west in the last analysis with 3 cards to cling to, one of which would be the king of spades and he needs to guard tenaciously the king of clubs doubleton. But with the rectification count given by AH, west down to 2 cards would be most unhappy with an automatic criss-cross squeeze developing against him. Lets see how.
After rectifying the count with HA given, south begins to run his winners in the red suits and before the last diamond is played, this would be the end position.
On the final squeeze card - the QD from dummy, declarer perforce discards C10 holding to his spades forcing west to bare his club king too - being in a quandary for if he lets spade king bare, declarer's 10S will win. With spade ace bringing the KS down and having the club ace as entry. But holding his club K has not help him either, making the dummy good with both clubs and spade ace. Such is the magic of squeeze.
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North West East South
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A53 K8642 7 QJ109
KQ109 A83 6542 J7
KQJ7 985 1043 A62
Q5 K8 J9732 A1064
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S W N E
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1C 1S 2D P
2NT P 4NT P
5H P 6NT All
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Pass
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North West East South (Declarer)
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A K8 Irrelevant 109
- - -
Q - -
Q5 K8 A10
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