Recap Of 5/2/2018 28 Board IMP Individual

It has been over 2 months since we last played.  March included the Nationals in Philadelphia plus other travel.  April included the Gatlinburg Regional plus other travel.  So here we are in May.  Lots of slams today, with four slams bid at one table that were not bid at the other (for large swings) and two more times slam was bid at both tables, making, for a push.  Rather than report the boards in numerical order, I’m going review the four slam swings first.

Here, the table that reached slam was not a practiced partnership with no bidding agreements.  In fact, everyone at the table was wondering if 3♥ was intended as natural/weak hearts or a splinter in support of spades (and we were discussing the appropriateness of simply asking – remember, we are just playing for fun.  Obviously in any competition the partners are supposed to have agreements, know their agreements, and would never be allowed to ask ‘what does that bid mean?’!!!).  However, South had an easy 2-way bid to discover if the 3♥ bid showed long/weak hearts or diamond support, simply raise to 4♥ and find out what partner does with that!  If partner had a hand with weak hearts, 4♥ will have good play.  And, if he had a diamond splinter, he can pull 4♥ to 5♦.  Upon hearing that it was a splinter in support of diamonds, South raised to slam and found a suitable dummy.  I led a small diamond thinking I may be able to cut down ruffs and that I would eventually score my ♦K anyway.  Declarer played safe for the slam by rising with the ♦A and playing another diamond, knowing that whoever won the ♦K at trick 2 couldn’t give themselves a ruff, and it would be unlikely that they could give partner a ruff either (thus insuring 2+2+4+4 for their contract).  So, I scored my ♦K, ‘holding’ declarer to 12 tricks.  Declarer commented after the hand that “that is, by far, the worst suit I ever held where I bid slam.”  Partner had him covered.

At the other table, a very practiced partnership (Cris and Bruce) with many pages of system notes was unable to find their way to the slam.  6NT is best (no ruff possible, double stoppers in all suits). When the diamond finesse won, declarer had 13 tricks, but our teammates only scored +520 for their game bid of 3NT.  Compared to the -920 at the other table, lose 9 IMPs.  Technically not a double digit loss due to the structure of the IMP table, but it felt like one at the time.

A “morning after” email discussed upgrades to the notes to handle this hand.  I commented after the hand that “our” system notes (the notes that I have with Bruce, but not Cris), do cover this hand (notes repeated below):

1C/2D and 1D/3C are invitational; 3 level MAJ splinters; 1C – 3D also splinter : Note: Splinters are game going values, while a splinter by responder after inverted raise is slammish

Still, even with this agreement, some judgment is involved.  Had North treated their hand as “less than slammish” and merely bid an immediate 3♥ splinter, it is still reasonable/possible, with AKAKA in the South hand, to pursue slam as was done at the other table.  Clearly, if North had this agreement and had chosen to make the 3♥ bid after the inverted raise to show a slammish hand with a singleton heart, the slam would have been reached.  Without specific agreements on this auction, our North/South teammates failed to find their way past 3NT.

So, be sure to discuss this with your partners so that you know, for starters, is 1m-(P)-3M natural/weak or splinter?  And, while you are at it, if you conclude it is a splinter, you may as well decide if there is a difference between an immediate splinter and a delayed splinter (after first offering an inverted minor suit raise).

Wow – this West hand is a rare powerhouse where 10 tricks are about as close to a 100% certainty you will ever have.  Here 12-13 tricks are possible if you can find partner with one or two club cards…or an entry to provide one or two discards…or an entry and a chance to lead up to the ♣K (and then guess what to play).  The problem was that partner has no red entry (due to my singleton aces), and a possible trump entry requires a specific holding, so the most likely chance for slam is a club card.  Clearly I was a bit of a wimp on this one – I was looking at 3 possible club losers (nearly certain to have 3 losers if I play clubs out of my hand with no club help in dummy).  Therefore, I didn’t view the 5 level as safe.  A bid of 4NT would have allowed me to locate the ♣A if partner held it, but I possessed no tool to locate the ♣Q, and I did not want to go minus if partner held neither of those cards.  At the other table, the player with my hand simply flipped his coin and it came up ‘bid the slam and see what happens.’  A heart was led at both tables.  Against the slam, the defense worked out to discard diamonds and save clubs, holding declarer to 10 tricks.  Against my game, I started playing trump and with 2 trump to go, the ♣10 was discarded.  That allowed me to ensure 11 tricks, so I stopped playing trumps and led the ♣K, dropping the (now singleton) ♣Q and scoring 12 tricks for +680.  With our teammates +200, that was 13 lucky IMPs for our side.  Perhaps someone else can better understand how to bid this hand.  From my viewpoint, I can’t really see any blame for bidding the slam or not bidding the slam – either you are feeling lucky or you are not.

Note that the slam cannot be beaten if the defense starts by leading the ♣A, since the 3rd club can be ruffed in dummy.  Good defense teammates!

There are mixed views of splinters in the expert world whether or not it is appropriate/valuable to bid a splinter that is a singleton ace.  The down side is that partner may view their hand as slam negative if they have strong values opposite the splinter, since the splinter is usually a small card.  The upside of splintering with a singleton ace is that, in some cases, a key card asking bid might disclose the singleton ace and partner can proceed accordingly.  I elected not to splinter and simply show a hand that evaluated to about 20 points.  Since partner had 12 HCP and a singleton, he judged that sufficient values were there for slam and bid key card, then showed that all key cards were present by checking on the kings via 5NT, but when I couldn’t show him the ♣K (to go with his ♣Q), he was fearful of a loser there.  He also held 2 losing hearts that had to be dealt with and had no way to count 13 sure tricks, so he settled for the small slam.

At the other table, the player with my hand opted to splinter with the singleton ♣A and when his partner cooperated with a return cue bid in hearts, the hand that I held ended up doing the key card asks.  Over 5NT (showing possession of all key cards and asking about specific kings), the North hand inexplicably showed the ♦K with his 6♦ reply and the grand slam was reached.  Of course, the 6 card spade suit  (unknown by South during the auction) immensely improved the prospects of 13 tricks.  But, still the grand slam was not a lock.  Declarer must ruff out a doubleton or tripleton ♦K, or guess the ♥Q.  When the ♦K fell on the second diamond ruff, the ♦Q remained, allowing a discard of the heart loser from the North hand, so there was no need to guess the location of the ♥Q.  Both tables played the deal the same way, with slam bid at both tables, but our 13 tricks were only worth 1010, while the grand slam scored up 1510, lose 11 IMPs.

Often, right or wrong, I find a way to justify my action to myself if no one else.  Every so often (too often) reporting a hand in the blog is super painful due to my clear culpability in the loss.  This is one of those hands.  Here we had a confused auction (partner thought one thing, I thought another) and we arrived in a very poor slam (albeit, as the cards lie, cold).  The bidding problems were annotated above, so I will move on to the play.  At the other table, requiring only 10 tricks for the contract, declarer received the requested club lead.  12 tricks are possible, but it is complicated and potentially dangerous to pursue the 12 tricks, so declarer simply took the 11 tricks in front of him, losing a heart and a club.

At my table, I had to score 12 tricks on a heart lead, so I was booked at trick one and needed the rest of the tricks.  A simple diamond finesse (small to the ♦10 after drawing 2 rounds of trumps) succeeds if my LHO has ♦Q, ♦Qx or ♦Qxx.  I can toss my 2 losing clubs from dummy on the ♦KJ.  Here is the tool I use to determine the odds of success on any given hand:

http://www.automaton.gr/tt/en/OddsTbl.htm

Using that tool resulted in this:

The tool says that the slam succeeds if the distribution that is shown in rows 8, 9 or 10 matches the hand in question.  As you can see, that makes this an 18.2% slam (of course this is assuming that trumps are 2-2, so the actual percentage is much lower).  Not the kind of slam you would choose to be in, but, nevertheless, not hopeless and, yes, trump were 2-2 and the ♦Qxx was with LHO making the slam cold with that line of play.

However, I adopted a more esoteric approach, looking for a squeeze where I hoped to find my RHO with the ♣K as well as 4+ diamonds with the ♦Q (when RHO overtook the ♥Q with the ♥K at trick 1, and returned the ♥A, there was some inference that hearts were 6 long on my left, and only 2 long on my right – therefore placing a lot of clubs and diamonds in the North hand).  Using the same tool mentioned above (this tool is not available while playing the hand!), I found the probability of RHO having this specific holding (♣K as well as 4+ diamonds with the ♦Q) to be only 15.2% (again, lower when you must also assume 2-2 trump).  However, this line of play has the advantage (since the defense already had me booked at trick 1), of not going down as soon as I lost a first round diamond finesse.  There is something mildly satisfying about not going down on a finesse early in a slam (but there is also something satisfying about attempting the best play for your contract!). 

Anyway, I ruffed the ♥A return at trick 2, drew trump (both following) ending in dummy (instead of ending in my hand and finessing the ♦10).  I ruffed a heart (RHO pitching a club).  I crossed to the ♣A (both following) and ruffed the last heart (RHO pitching another club).  Now I crossed to the ♦A (both following) and led the ♠Q (RHO pitching the ♣J, I pitched a club, and LHO pitched a heart). In this position, I led dummy’s last trump, the ♠8:

When I led dummy’s last trump, RHO pitched the ♣K!  At this point, Mark R was hoping/assuming that the ending looked like this:

If this had been the actual layout of the cards, pitching the ♣K is the only way to defeat the slam.

Instead of realizing that I am now cold for the slam (once the ♣K was discarded – quite easy to see with all the cards laid out above), I ‘concluded’ that RHO had the precise holding I was looking/hoping for (♣K plus ♦Qxxx) and that he had been duly squeezed.  I was momentarily elated!  So, I mistakenly kept my ‘good’ ♣Q) and finessed the ♦J, losing to the ♦Q, down 1.  If I bothered doing the math, I can throw my ♣Q at trick 10.  The ♣10 is high with only 1 other club outstanding.  So, in the 3 card end position, had I thrown away my ♣Q, I can cash TWO clubs in dummy and lead to my ♦K for 12 tricks, scoring up +1430 to win 13 IMPs.  Instead I scored -100 to go with our teammates -650 and we lost 13 IMPs.

Counting suits is always good.  Sometimes, when a lot of discards are in play, keeping track of all suits can be difficult.  But, here, RHO followed with a club when I played to the ♣A plus they discarded a club at every opportunity (2 heart leads, 2 trump leads).  Counting the clubs can’t be that hard.  When 10 clubs are gone and only 3 remain and you hold a high one and a low one, those two clubs will produce 2 tricks.  Always.  Disappointed.

One more thing – my computation that the squeeze only produced a 15.2% success rate is bolstered by other extraneous factors.  For instance, my a priori assumption, for the squeeze to work, required LHO to hold no more than 3 diamonds.  But, had my LHO held ♦9xxx, perhaps they would not have  held onto all of their diamonds to the very end, allowing a pseudo squeeze to succeed.  Or, as in the actual case, the defenders will misjudge and discard incorrectly.

Epilogue…There are many lessons from this hand.

• Know your bidding agreements (we should not have reached this horrible slam)
• When you are in a nearly hopeless contract, don’t give up
• When you are in any contract, any time, count, count, count and count some more
• Don’t get distracted with a planned line of play when information develops that another line is better
• Sometimes a mathematically inferior line of play can become the best available line of play when you add in the potential for defensive missteps.

While these slam swings were happening, there were 3 other boards with double digit swings.  One was a bidding mishap, the other 2 involved leads.

The bidding (annotated above) wasn’t especially effective, but reaching the 4-3 fit in spades instead of the more reasonable 3NT proved to be adequate to win the board.  Defending against 2NT, North pitched down to a singleton ♦K, so I was able to win both my ♦A and ♦Q for 10 tricks, +180 (losing a club, diamond and heart, winning 4+2+2+2).  At the other table, the spade game suffered from the 6-0 split, but declarer still managed to score 10 tricks for +620, to lose 10 IMPs.

What happened in the bidding?  I thought 1m-1M-2NT showing 18-19 HCP was the equivalent of the auction I was actually facing (which had the intervening 2♣ call).  I could have bid 3NT rather than 2NT, but usually 1m-1m-3NT shows about an 8-9 trick hand with a long running minor with hopes partner can produce the 9th trick if needed.  I thought I was just bidding the values I had while showing clubs stopped.  My partner, having bid hearts, was concerned about his ‘weak hearts’ and I guess didn’t think we actually held 29-30 HCP to pursue our likely 9 tricks in 3NT.

As North, I might have chosen to open 1♥ but after an original pass, that weak club suit would not tempt me to enter a live auction.  However, the 2♣ bid proved to be amazingly effective at disrupting our auction.  With that miserable dummy, there would not be many tricks available for North in any contract, but it was hard to find a penalty double at that vulnerability.  Playing support doubles, it was impossible.

Here, the same auction reached the same contract.  At my table, East started with a trump lead.  When partner tried a diamond towards dummy, East hopped with the ♦K and continued with a passive trump.    Declarer could draw trump, lead another diamond to the ♦10 and was able to throw a losing club on the ♦Q, eliminating any guess for the ♣ A/Q.  When declarer led their last club towards dummy, East ducked, allowing the ♣K to score, reaching 11 tricks for our side, +450.

At other table, East started with the ♠10 and learned there was no future in spades.  When declarer drew trump and tried a small diamond towards ♦Q103,  East won the ♦K and switched to a small club to put declarer to a guess.  Declarer guessed wrong, +50 for our teammates.  Win 11 IMPs.

Quite different bidding reached the same contract, 4♠ by South.  Our teammates were faced with a diamond lead (the suit that East opened in 3rd seat), presenting no problems for declarer.  Upon winning the ♠A, when West didn’t cash the ♥A, declarer had 12 tricks for +680 (his losing hearts were discarded on the good clubs).

At my table, partner found the killing club lead.  Declarer is helpless.  When declarer led trumps, partner won the ♠A and continued with a high club for me to ruff (asking for a heart return).  When I continued a heart through the ♥K3 to partner’s ♥AQ, we obtained the necessary 4 tricks for the defense, +100, win 13 IMPs.  Nice lead partner!