Playing in a teams match, you pick up the hand below:
SOUTH
♠ AQ53
♥ AK985
♦ KQJT
♣ —
Best is to start quietly with a 1H opening. There is a small chance that you will miss a game if the other players pass (and your partner has, for example, Kxxxx of spades and nothing else) but so long as the bidding does not die out, you will have room to continue describing your hand if necessary.
Anyway, partner makes a limit raise to 3H (11-12). Your hand revalues to 24 total points (including the void) so you figure you have values for slam, and bid 6H.
West tries leading the DA and another diamond. What is your analysis of the hand?
Dealer South, nil vul.
NORTH
♠ J42
♥ QJT
♦ 43
♣ AQ932
SOUTH
♠ AQ53
♥ AK985
♦ KQJT
♣ —
You cannot afford another loser, yet the spade suit looks shaky. You start by leading a low heart, winning in dummy, and are surprised to see East show out. Still, your hearts are good enough that the 5-0 break should not cause any grief. The spades, however, are still worrying you. How should you proceed? Is there a way to play the spade suit to make all three of your honours there?
The correct way to play Jxx opposite AQxx is to lead a low spade to finesse to the queen, then bang down the ace and hope the king was not only onside (“under” the A-Q) but also doubleton. That is a big ask, and all the more so with East being void in another suit (and therefore unlikely to have only doubleton in this suit).
Rightly or wrongly, declarer instead tried leading the SJ. If East had the SK and failed to “cover an honour with an honour”, the contract could roll home on this defensive slip. But declarer also had a couple of backup plans in mind.
On the SJ lead from dummy, East correctly covered with the SK, thereby forcing out two of declarer’s honours on one trick. Declarer cashed the SQ then tried leading a diamond from hand, hoping to discard the spade loser from dummy. No luck there; West ruffed, forcing dummy to over-ruff.
What next?
The CA could be cashed to discard a spade from hand, but that would still leave a loser in spades. Paradoxically, it was more useful to leave the CA stranded in dummy, inaccessible to declarer – with the opponents perhaps not realising that was the case…
So, not touching the clubs (because doing so would have revealed the void in declarer’s hand), the remaining trumps were played (overtaking the last heart from dummy to get to hand). When the last diamond was cashed, East fell victim to a pseudo-squeeze:
Dealer South, nil vul.
NORTH
♠ —
♥ —
♦ —
♣ AQ9
WEST EAST
♠ — ♠ T
♥ — ♥ —
♦ — ♦ —
♣ 876 ♣ KJ
SOUTH
♠ 53
♥ —
♦ J
♣ —
On the lead of the DJ, East was unwilling to relinquish the club guard so instead made a fatal spade discard, so now declarer’s spades were winners and the slam made. This was the complete hand:
Dealer South, nil vul.
NORTH
♠ J42
♥ QJT
♦ 43
♣ AQ932
WEST EAST
♠ 96 ♠ KT87
♥ 76432 ♥ H —
♦ A8 ♦ 97652
♣ 8765 ♣ KJT4
SOUTH
♠ AQ53
♥ AK985
♦ KQJT
♣ —
As so often is the case, there were clues that could have alerted East to declarer’s ruse. Strong evidence of the club void was the failure to Blackwood – surely, without the void, South would have checked there were not two aces missing? But defence is a difficult part of the game and one of declarer’s jobs is to capitalise on those difficulties.