Intermediate and newcomer players - sharpen your game with this series of tutorials. You can browse the index by topic, or read them in order. Learn even more at ACBL's Learn page.
Partner opens 1♥ and it’s your turn to bid, holding:
♠ AQ654 ♥ K843 ♦ K7 ♣ 76 You have enough for game in Hearts and could just bid 4♥ directly. But nowadays that 1♥-4♥ sequence is generally used for preemptive purposes, where Responder has 5-card support and a weak hand. That being so, the obvious choices are: - Bid 1♠ and then leap to 4♥ the next time around, showing a hand with Spades, with Heart support, and with game-going values. That’s OK, but would be more appropriate with only three-card support. - Bid an artificial 2NT, commonly played as the “Jacoby 2NT”, showing four-card Heart support and a game-going hand.
Anyway, you make your choice, Partner goes to slam, and now you are in the South seat, trying to make 12 tricks after the opening lead of the ♣Q.
You have 11 tricks, and the obvious route to 12 is via the Spade finesse. Does that mean that your slam is a 50% shot? No, (after drawing trumps) you can improve the chance of success to 53% by cashing the ♠A first (in case the ♠K is singleton with East) and then leading towards the ♠Q. That’s a little progress, but you can do much better than that. How do you maximize your chances for 12 tricks? Having won the opening lead and drawn trumps, you cash those minor suit winners, and lead a Spade to the Ace. Then you cross back to hand with a trump and lead a Spade towards the Queen. To see why this is the best line, look at the full diagram:
East wins the King on the second round of the suit, but has no safe exit. With nothing left but minor suit cards, whatever he plays will give Declarer a ruff and sluff. Declarer will pitch the Spade loser from his hand and ruff on the board. Making 12 tricks.
Cashing the minor suit winners and the ♠A before leading towards the ♠Q gives Declarer four ways to win: - The slam makes if the ♠K is with West, of course … - … also if the ♠K is singleton with East - … also if the ♠K is doubleton with East - … and Declarer even makes if East has all five Spades (when Declarer leads towards the Ace and West shows out, Dummy ducks and West is end-played).
We referred this deal to our Probability Department and they told us that the total chance of success works out to 69%. But you don’t need to be a trained mathematician to make the contract, it’s enough to realize that four chances are better than one, and the way to get those extra chances is to strip East of all his safe exit cards. |