By Mike Lawrence

North-South reached a good slam after some competitive bidding from West.  South started with a fine two club bid and West took advantage of the vulnerability to bid three hearts.  North doubled for takeout, a sensible treatment.  It is odd, in that some pairs use a double by North to say that they have nothing.  Different strokes for different folks.

South bid three notrump with misgivings.  He might have had a little less, but he was missing so many fillers that he settled for a modest game.  North felt he had a tad extra, and showed it by making a quantitative notrump raise.  This was all South needed to hear and he went directly to six clubs.  

West led the ten of spades.  How should South play?  One very acceptable line is to play low from dummy, allowing East to have the king of spades.  That will leave you with twelve top tricks, regardless of where that queen of diamonds is.

Do you see a better line?

By Mike Lawrence

Playing in a pair game against competent opponents, you are doing nicely until this hand comes along.  With both sides vulnerable, your side bids to three notrump.

The auction is one of those Standard American sequences that leaves no one satisfied.  North has too good a hand to rebid two diamonds and the suit is a bit poor to bid three diamonds.  The K93 of hearts are tempting too, but there is no way to do everything.  North falls back on three diamonds, which is the bid that most players would make.

South, holding a diamond honor and fair points, has a pretty routine three notrump bid.  South has to make a few wishes of his own, but this is the way that you have to bid hands like this.  

West leads the queen of spades, won nicely by dummy’s ace.  This start doesn’t hurt you any.  Three notrump is virtually cold against all but the cruelest lie of the cards.  Actually, South should be wondering how many tricks he should play for.  On a good day, he might take two spades, a heart, six diamonds, and three clubs.  This is optimistic, for sure, but it could happen.

At trick two, South starts diamonds, leading the queen for a finesse.  It wins, East and West both following with little diamonds.  Only the king and ten are remaining.  This means that the really nasty distribution does not exist.  Three notrump is going to make.  At trick two, South led another diamond and captured East’s ten with the ace, West showing out.  

South suddenly got hit with the urge to think.  What is South thinking about now?

South is thinking that he isn’t so safe in three notrump any more.  He proceeded to prove the wisdom of that thought.  South saw that taking the king of spades now would be fruitless since that would establish a ton of tricks for the opponents.  He tried something else.  South led a third round of diamonds to East’s king.  South rooted hard for a spade return but East seemed to be doing some thinking of his own and wasn’t listening to South.  East returned the ten of clubs.  South’s efforts from this point on failed and after it was all over, East-West marked up plus one hundred.

Click the tab to view the four hands.

By Mike Lawrence

By Mike Lawrence

By Mike Lawrence

Where Am I?

By Mike Lawrence

By Mike Lawrence

By Mike Lawrence

When you play a hand, you need to plan not only the current trick, but the succeeding tricks as well. In this series, you will be shown a hand and how it was played. At the end, you will be asked to determine where the play went wrong and what should have been done about it.

North and South showed good judgment in the bidding.  South bid two hearts in the reopening seat.  This is a much better bid than double because South does not have the values to double and then bid hearts if West or East compete to two spades.  North in turn showed some restraint by raising only to three hearts.  South was making a REOPENING BID and did not promise as good a hand as an overcall.

South had plenty under the circumstances and continued to game.  It was unfortunate that four hearts turned out to be a poor contract.  West leads the two of clubs.

At trick one, East produced the ten of clubs and South won with the jack.  Having been given one trick, South had hopes of making his contract.

South drew trump in three rounds, ending in dummy.  West followed once and then high-lowed in spades.  South then led a spade to the ten, which lost to West’s queen.  South didn’t really expect that finesse to win and it did not.  This put the onus on West.  If West led another club or a spade, South would have time to set up a spade trick for a diamond discard.  But, West was doing some thinking too and eventually produced the king of diamonds.  South ducked in the hopes that West had only two diamonds, but it did not happen.  West eventually got in with the ace of spades and the defenders took their diamond trick for down one.

By Mike Lawrence

When you play a hand, you need to plan not only the current trick, but the succeeding tricks as well.  In this series, you will be shown a hand and how it was played.  At the end, you will be asked to determine where the play went wrong and what should have been done about it.

South had terrible trumps, but he had a good fit for diamonds, an ace, and good shape.  Certainly, North’s trumps were a comfort to South when he saw the dummy.

Here is how the play actually went.

West led the king of spades, taken by South.  South decided that if he could ruff three clubs in his hand, he might make twelve tricks.  He started this plan by leading a club to the ace at trick two and ruffing a club in his hand at trick three.  

South saw the need to knock out the ace of diamonds so he started that suit by leading a diamond to dummy’s queen.  East surprised South by producing the ace.  Back came the nine of spades, which forced dummy to ruff with the jack of hearts.  

From this point on, South could not make the hand.  Here are the complete hands.  South could not draw trump because they divided four-one.  South could never take a diamond trick because East had the singleton ace.  East, of course, was quick to return spades every time he got in.  Each spade lead forced dummy to ruff with a trump honor and that set up a trick for East’s 10982 of hearts.  A brutal hand.