April 7, 2011

This week I am going to write a bit about defensive signals.  Some of us use 
them a lot and some of us don't use them very much at all.  I hope that Deal 27 
from this week illustrates how essential they are to maximizing your tricks on 
defense.   East/West are defending 3D by North, with East's and South's 
holdings in hearts shown below.

             A 10 3
K Q J 6 2

Suppose East leads the King of spades, taken by North's Ace, and declarer plays 
out the AKQ of diamonds, with East and West each following to all three rounds.  
Declarer then leads a small heart, and you duck, letting dummy win the 
King.  Declarer than calls for the Heart Queen, with both partner and declarer 
following suit.  Clearly dummy has no entries outside of the heart suit, so it is 
very important you choose the right time to take your Ace.  If North just
played his last heart,  you want to take your Ace now, holding declarer to one 
heart trick.  However, if you take your Ace now and declarer still holds another 
heart, then you are possibly giving away two extra tricks.  What should you do?

It depends.  Were you watching what your partner played?  Suppose partner 
first played the 8 of hearts and then the 4.  In standard signals, playing high-
low like this shows an even number of hearts.  Therefore you know that partner 
held two hearts and declarer held three hearts, and you should hold up one 
more round.  [Playing upside-down count, partner would first play the 4 and 
then the 8 to show an even number of cards.]   However, if partner first played 
the 4 and then the 8, then that shows an odd number of hearts (namely 3), so 
declarer must have only two and you should take your Ace now.

I showed this suit in isolation to make a specific point.   On any given hand 
there may be other considerations that will affect your decision.  On this 
specific deal, it actually didn't matter when East took the Ace as long as he 
made the proper switch afterwards, because E/W could take all of their tricks 
before declarer could get in again, and declarer wouldn't have anything to pitch 
on the good hearts anyway.  North should lose one spade, two clubs, and a 
heart against reasonable defense.

On Board 17, partner and I had a misunderstanding.  My partner opened 1C as 
North, and the bidding proceeded 
 

1C   X    1S   P
2S   3H  Passout.

Q 8 2
Q 6
J 10 7 2
Q 8 7 6 
         A K 7 6 4
         10 7 5
         9 8 6
         4 3

I thought about leading my doubleton club, hoping to get a ruff, but ultimately
decided to lead my Spade Ace first to get a look at dummy.  Then, based on the 
dummy and partner's play at trick one, I would decide how to proceed.   Partner 
and I play that the lead of an Ace is asking for attitude.  Since we play upside-
down attitude, this means that a low card would mean he wants me to continue 
the suit and a high card means he wants me to switch.  Well, on the first trick 
partner plays the Spade Jack, which is obviously the highest spade he holds. 
Apparently he wants me to switch.

However, I don't need partner to tell me to switch, because if I persist with 
spades by cashing the King,  dummy's Queen will be set up.  I also know that 
partner doesn't have a doubleton spade, looking for a ruff, because he should 
have at least three spades in order to have bid them.  There is a school of 
thought that when it is obvious that a suit should not be continued, partner 
should not give an attitude signal, but should rather give a suit preference 
signal, directing the leader as to which suit to switch to. For example, if 
dummy has lots of trumps and no more cards left in the suit that was led, it 
usually isn't beneficial to continue the suit, and suit-preference signals are 
given instead.

Is that the case here?  After all, it seems clear to me not to continue spades, 
and partner knows that I know this, and I know that partner knows that I know 
this.  But, we haven't specifically talked about whether dummy holding Qxx in 
the suit lead qualifies as one of the exceptions, even if I know partner holds 
3-card support.   Drat.  I was all set to lead a club at trick 2, but now I'm not 
sure.  Dummy's clubs are Q876, and it will cost us a trick for me to lead a
club if declarer holds AJ or AJ9, because I will be giving him a free finesse which 
he might not be able to do himself (perhaps no entry to the board).  I've talked 
myself out of it, and I am going to read that remarkably high Spade Jack as suit 
preference.  In this case, the high card means he wants me to lead the higher 
ranking suit of the two suits remaining (diamonds and clubs), warning me 
against his poor club holding.  So, I play a diamond.  Partner must hold the
diamond ace, and will then return the Spade Ten to keep dummy's Spade Queen 
from setting up.  Then he will sit back and wait passively for his Club King.

        J 10 3
        9 4 2
        K 5
        A K J 10 9
Q 8 2                9 5
Q 6                  A K J 8 3
J 10 7 2             A Q 4 3
Q 8 7 6              5 2
        A K 7 6 4
        10 7 5
        9 8 6
        4 3

Wrong! Making three.  Indeed partner just wanted to tell me to switch and 
thought that it would be obvious that I should switch to clubs.  I guess the 
important lesson here is to have a clear set of criteria with partner for when you 
will deviate from giving your standard signal.  I thought this was one of those 
times and he didn't, so clearly we don't have such a set.   made the contract 
much easier for declarer by giving him the diamond finesse.  Now, declarer 
should have been able to work it out anyway to use the Heart Queen as an 
entry in order take the finesse himself (and get the same nine tricks), but I 
took away all of his guesswork. We get one match point for our -140.  Several 
E/W pairs are making diamond partials and one N/S pair went down 2 in 3 
spades.