This hand is adapted from a Swiss event last week at the NYC regional.
You: 9xx AKT xx K9xxx
The opponents reach 4S via a Stayman auction: 1NT-2C-2H-3NT-4S. You choose to lead a diamond. Dummy wins, partner encourages. A heart is ducked to your T and you play another diamond – after some thought declarer, an expert, wins and ducks another heart. You get out with a third heart, ruffed in dummy. Declarer runs the CJ to your K and you exit a club which he wins with the A. Now he leads the HQ. You are down to 9xx --- --- xxx and dummy now has QTx --- Jx x. What is going on, and what do you do?
Answer: Declarer must have started with AKxx Qxxx xx AQx. So, he could pull trumps and claim, but he is afraid you have 4 trumps (especially since he infers you have only 3 hearts and 2 diamonds) and hoping to get some information when he leads the HQ. Discard, and he may assume you didn’t want to ruff from Jxxx and hook the ST, going down in a “cold” contract.
At the table, I actually had J9x of trumps (that’s the “adapted” part of the story), so there was no way for declarer (Gavin Wolpert) to go down at this point. He did say he was indeed planning to hook the trumps if I discarded.
1 comment:
Good post. Excellent food for thought. I hope I remember it next time!
Post a Comment