Spider bridge

Of course, you've heard the story about Robert the Bruce and the spider. Twice the spider failed to connect its web, but succeeded on the third try. That spider and, thus inspired, Robert the Bruce, refused to give up and were successful in the end. Here are two consecutive deals which looked hopeless at first. But I refused to give up...

Rixi Markus was fond of saying "most contracts can be made, and most contracts can be defeated." That's what makes bridge so much fun (and occasionally frustrating). Both of the the contracts shown here could (and maybe should) have been set. But they weren't!

Sometimes, I take the descriptions of the robot's hand a little too optimistically. As David Bird would say in the title of his excellent book: "Somehow, we ended up in 6NT." 

Assuming RHO doesn't have DT7653, we have 11 tricks after knocking out the spade ace.  So, all I had to do was to win the opening lead of CQ, and play a spade up to the queen. If it loses, I've "rectified the count" for a squeeze, and it it wins... then I've still got my 11 tricks, but without having rectified the count.

At this point, the double dummy play is to duck a spade to RHO's now singleton ace. But, in any case, I should have cashed the CK before crossing back to dummy, in order to tighten my grip on the defenders. I suspect that, had I done so, they would have defended correctly and I would go down.

Instead, RHO felt squeezed in three suits (he wasn't squeezed in clubs and should have known that from the opening lead). Nevertheless, we pitched three hearts in quick succession. Up to this point, I had no trouble pitching losers from my hand: the three small black cards. On the last diamond, the "squeeze card," RHO played yet another heart and I discarded the C4. It was unlikely to be useful since LHO who was certainly guarding clubs would be playing after me.

At this point, there were only four hearts out and if they all fell under the AK, the contract would be mine. And so it proved.

If there is a moral to this story, it is this: even if you don't have a true squeeze, and even if you don't play it perfectly, your opponents may not quite know what's going on and give you the contract anyway.

The next hand was an example of that uncommon situation: the "impossible spade." Kudos to the robot for knowing this convention but shame on him for not understanding the follow-up bids. My 3D was "to play!" If I'd wanted to be in game, I could have made any other bid. Notwithstanding his minimum invitation and poor trump support, my CHO put me in 4H.

The D8 looked ominously like a singleton (although it wasn't). I had two spade losers, at least one club loser and, since I was missing KJ9743 of trumps, it looked like at least one, if not three trumps losers. Was there any hope at all? I opted to win the opening lead in the dummy and play a low trump to my queen. For better or worse, I decided to return a trump, using the ten to force at least one of the top honors out. LHO, somewhat obligingly, played the nine while RHO followed the principle of playing the card he was known to hold, the king.

At this point, RHO made a play (CQ) that wasn't exactly wrong, but certainly made my life a little easier, since I was the one with the jack. After caching the spade ace at trick five, he can easily get himself a trump promotion by continuing with a low spade to his parter's king. But this is where the play of the CQ led to their failure: believing that RHO had the CJ for the setting trick, he gave up on the trump promotion and played a club. After winning the trick and drawing the outstanding trumps, I could claim another impossible contract.

What can go away?

In general, the play of a bridge hand is a race between the declarer trying to set up enough tricks to make his contract and the defenders trying to their tricks first. It's a bit more obvious what's going on in a no-trump contract, but the principle remains the same.

Most declarers start out with a number of losers that they have to reduce to a particular allowable number. Of course, you may prefer to think of establishing winners instead--particularly in a no-trump contract. Some techniques such as finessing and squeezing are mostly concerned with establishing winners as opposed to decreasing the number of losers. Henceforth in this article, I will be discussing loser-elimination in suit contracts.

We normally think about reducing the losers in the master hand--the one with the long trumps. However, in a dummy reversal, the master hand is the one with the shorter trumps and the "dummy" is the one with longer trumps. Sometimes, the designation of master/dummy is somewhat arbitrary when the suit lengths are equal. Obviously, the location of the actual declarer (and that of the face-up hand) is irrelevant here. There are two primary techniques to eliminate losers from (the master) hand: ruffing, i.e. trumping losers in dummy, and discarding them on dummy's winners. A cross-ruff is a hybrid strategy: ruffing hand's losers in dummy and dummy's losers in hand. There's one other hybrid strategy and I'm not sure it has a name: it consists of discarding dummy's losers in suit A on hand's winners in suit B and then ruffing hand's losers in suit A in dummy. I'm just going to call this technique the hybrid plan and note that it's unusual.

Anyway, where am I going with all of this? It's because I believe that the major strategy for the defenders of suit contracts consists of two different tactics: (1) getting their own ruffs; and (2) figuring out what can go away, and ensuring that those potential tricks don't disappear before they can establish them. Along the way, of course, they will be cashing winners and switching leads as appropriate to best attack suits. Although I figured this out long ago, I still make the same mistakes of allowing tricks to disappear. But you shouldn't ever let it happen!

Here's an example from a recent BBO speedball tournament:

Kim, my favorite partner in all things including bridge, did well to put me on lead at T2. What should I switch to? Given the dummy, I diagnosed that the safest would be diamonds. But I forgot to ask "What can go away?" Based on the auction, any tricks we had coming in diamonds couldn't go away. That was declarer's second suit. It had to be at least four cards long since she didn't have four spades. But it might be longer. In that case, there was a danger that one (or two) of dummy's clubs might go away. A switch to clubs at trick 3 was the proper defense. Declarer could still make the contract but it wouldn't have been quite so easy. Unfortunately, many of our teammates didn't do so well as our opponents and we ended up with only 37% on this board. We still had a 73% session but +50 on this board would have put us into first place.  

Defensive coups in the trump suit

Recently, my partner Ethan Wood and I were the hapless victims of a clever defensive play by Andy Goodman, playing with Chris Compton:

The scene was the "Social Distancing Pairs," a side game in the first online regional tournament set up by the ACBL. We got to a good contract, 3♠ by South. Follow the play. At trick 4, Ethan took the percentage trump finesse (to the T9). Knowing that he was only "entitled" to one trump trick anyway, Andy realized that a little subterfuge might just get him two--and, more importantly perhaps--upset the timing of the whole hand. So, he won with the K, exiting with a heart (all the better to have the "winning" trump finesse taken a second time). Ethan played another spade towards his hand. When Chris followed low, there was still the J and 6 out against him. The jack was of course "known" to be in the East hand. Playing the T would "obviously" allow him to pick up the suit, whereas playing the queen (if he foresaw a problem) would in any case necessitate another finesse which, admittedly, could probably be achieved successfully assuming Chris had three hearts.

But, seriously, who in their right mind would play the queen (or ace) here?

Of course, Andy now disrupted the whole hand by putting Ethan again in dummy where a diamond could no longer be finessed. The result? 98% for them, 2% for us.

My own play in a friendly team match a couple of days ago was less spectacular but equally effective. Playing a team game with friends (I've made the players anonymous), I was faced with the situation of what looked like a cold contract by my RHO. In fact, he's making six. What could I do to disrupt things? Follow the play:

Again, declarer did something entirely normal. He could have made the contract with two overtricks at any time after my duck. When I did win the trump queen, the contract was still cold but I think declarer probably credited me with having started with Q972 in which case, he might end up down 2 if I had a fourth heart. I think what happened is that declarer was now off balance and, while he could have steadied himself by drawing both the last trumps, it can be hard to recover when all your earlier assumptions have been invalidated.

BTW, both sides missed 7NT on this hand but our teammates were in a safe 3NT for an 11 IMP gain.

The importance of being earnest

The importance of being earnest in your discards cannot be over-emphasized. The title of course comes from the play of that name by Oscar Wilde. But the point I wish to make is that, when dummy (or declarer) has a long running suit, the defenders have to announce the suits they will guard and stick to that plan earnestly.

Here's a hand that came up at the club (matchpoints):

At my table, I opened 2NT in second seat and partner raised to 3NT. Clearly, with the insight of double-dummy, North should lead out his hearts from top to bottom and achieve a +100 score.

But let's say North figures that establishing his longest and strongest suit (with two side entries) is the proper thing to do and leads a low spade. This is what happened at several tables and most of us took all of the tricks for 720.

But it shouldn't have happened that way. There are only eleven top tricks and, providing that the defenders don't get mixed up, there's actually no squeeze, whether single, double or triple.

North must realize that the most his partner can hold is two or three points. Unless West was Zach Grossack or Harrison Luba, for example, in which case South could easily hold four or five points ;)

Let's say that declarer calls for dummy's king which wins and then crosses to the CA. What can South hold? The club king? Seems unlikely because declarer might have cut himself off from those clubs by taking away dummy's entry. By the way, do you see how important it is (usually) to play the highest card from hidden equals? It causes the opponents to be less than 100% sure where the lower equal (the king in this case) actually is.

So, probably declarer has the king. Then, what useful card could South possibly hold? The heart queen? Or maybe he has only the jack. Either way, North can immediately see that the one suit he must guard is diamonds. He will have to make six discards on the clubs: when the clubs are finished, he will have five cards left: three diamonds and two others. But, unless he keeps a small heart and/or a small spade, he can be end-played into leading away from his queen of diamonds. So, he must choose: keep a high heart or a high spade. Which card is South more likely to hold: ST or HQ? at this point, it's a bit of a toss-up. But North doesn't have to decide just yet.

At this point, proper technique by declarer against expert defenders would be to cash the two top diamonds and hope for a squeeze to materialize. But against defenders who discard more or less randomly, it's probably better to just run the clubs (which is what I did).

So, when declarer plays the CK, North must immediately signal which suit he will guard or, if that's impossible, to start showing which suit(s) he will not guard. Regardless of the carding scheme by defenders, North has an appropriate diamond to discard. The other players follow suit. On the small club at trick four, North will have to play a neutral spade (the five, assuming that he started with the three). South now must decide which suit he will guard. It doesn't matter which he chooses on this hand, as long as he sticks with it. Let's say that he discards an encouraging heart. Now, North can throw that other small spade, thus confirming that he will guard diamonds and spades. The important point is that, although it's possible that the defenders may already have made an error, they must stick with the plan. In this scenario, one error might cost an extra trick. But switching plans will likely cost two tricks.

North will immediately throw the two high hearts and the SQ (implying the J). South will pitch all of his diamonds and two more hearts. Although it takes guts for North to jettison two high hearts, he should remember that when he has most of his side's assets, the little exit cards can be as precious as the high cards.

Declarer is helpless. He will end up losing a diamond and the last spade. And all because N/S were careful to formulate a plan and stick with it.