A stepping stone, sort of

One of the rarest plays in bridge is a steppingstone squeeze. It's a situation in which declarer can win all but one of the remaining tricks, but doesn't have the transportation back and forth to collect them all.

The Bridge World magazine defines a steppingstone this way: A squeeze in which an opponent is either forced on lead to provide a missing entry or threatened with the use of a blocked winner as an entry. You can read the Wikipedia description here.

I've been playing on Bridgebase Online (BBO) with the robots. You can blame Glen Ashton. He did it during the month of October, and wrote a series of posts about his experiences. You can go here and work your way back, if interested. If not interested, read his blog anyway -- it's first-class.

I played 3NT in a battle of the bots on this deal:

               ♠ 6 5
               ♥ 4 2
               ♦ A Q 9 8 7
               ♣ 10 8 7 5
==
               ♠ A J 10 4
               ♥ K Q 10 3
               ♦ K
               ♣ A J 6 4

I opened 1♣, Robot North bid 1♦ and Robot East overcalled 1♠. I jumped to 2NT, North bid 3♣, and I ended the auction with 3NT.

West led the ♥6. I played low from dummy and East won the ace. Don't you love it. Instead of West leading what East suggested, he led his own moth-eaten suit. East shifted to the ♠K. I won and tried the effect of a low club from hand. West won the ♣Q (East playing the 9!), and exited with the ♠8 to East's queen.

I won the spade continuation with the ♠J and West discarded the ♥9. Could the ♥J now be dropping? Not likely - the robots love to falsecard.

I now had these tricks: three spades, two hearts, three diamonds and one club. The problem was, however, I couldn't untangle them because my ♦K was singleton. Not to worry -- I cashed my top spades, top hearts, my diamond king while West discarded a club and a diamond. Next, I exited with a heart to West's jack. Upon winning, he (is a robot a he, couldn't it be a she, or maybe an it), had to lead a diamond to the board, or a club into my tenace. No matter how the East-West cards divided, West had to be the victim of a steppingstone or an endplay.

Here are all four hands:

               ♠ 6 5
               ♥ 4 2
               ♦ A Q 9 8 7
               ♣ 10 8 7 5
♠ 8 2                         ♠ K Q 9 7 3
♥ J 9 7 6 5                   ♥ A 8
♦ 4 3                         ♦ J 10 6 5 2
♣ K Q 3 2                     ♣ 9
                ♠ A J 10 4
                ♥ K Q 10 3
                ♦ K
                ♣ A J 6 4

The board was played 34 times and 3NT made 13 times (results here), so I had company. Still, I thought the ending was elegant.