Squeeze or be squeezed

A simple-looking 3nt on board 32 from our 3^rd quarter against the Diamond team led to very interesting play. The hand record is at: http://usbf.org/docs/vugraphs/USBCUSA2/hands/USBCUSA2_2009_R32_5_T1_31-60.PDF

The play started the same way at both tables: North (Brad Moss and I) led a spade, declarer played 2 more rounds, and we played a 4^th round. Now declarer led the DQ and we both erred by ducking. Brian Platnick capitalized by cashing his clubs, and I was squeeze/endplayed – whatever I pitched, he could exit appropriately for 9 tricks. Note the difference if I win the diamond and cash my spade -- *declarer* is squeezed from 9 winners down to 8, I exit safely, and he is down. Notice also, declarer had to “steal” that diamond trick before the squeeze would function against me. Well played, right? Maybe not.

At the other table, after the DQ was ducked, declarer (Mark Lair) led a heart to the K, for an immediate down 1. The commentators found this odd, but unsurprisingly Lair’s play is well-reasoned. Suppose we move the HA to the South hand. Now after Platnick cashed his clubs and exited a diamond, the last spade would squeeze him for down 1. (The defense has cleverly lost 8 tricks to rectify the count J.) So effectively Platnick played North for the HA and Lair played South for it -- Lair’s play looks like the better percentage because of the spade distribution, so declarer “should” go down even after the misdefense. Maybe Platnick thought he had a sure thing by forcing me to lead hearts, and overlooked the possible impending squeeze against him. Or maybe I do him a disservice and he “read” me for the HA, but I don’t see how.

Now, Moss and I should have been able to avoid that fatal diamond duck – once you think about it, it can’t be wrong to win, cash your spade and exit. We were led astray by the rule of thumb “no point in winning the trick if you don’t have 5 to cash.” This is often a good rule, but the rule that truly applied here was “grab your tricks early if endplays are possible.” Note that this would have been really obvious if clubs had been cashed first, and we had pitched a diamond – no one would then duck the diamond and leave themselves with bare ace. Holding Axx in diamonds gave a false sense that it was ok to duck the trick – the third diamond is an illusion because you can be squeezed out of it.

By the way, it looks like an improvement for declarer to play one round of diamonds before the 3^rd round of spades. This is necessary to make it double-dummy (following Platnick’s line thereafter. If you plan to play South for HA I suppose it doesn’t matter.)