Wednesday, February 3, 2010

If you know what to do, do it

Phillip Alder has a bridge column, NEA Bridge, that appears in syndication in many local newspapers. (He also has another that appears two or three days a week in the NY Times.) The quality is usually quite good. This is from his Jan. 28, 2010 article.

You are on defense as West on this layout:

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

Right-hand opponent opened 1, you passed and LHO bid 1. Partner overcalled 1 and RHO rebid 2. You jumped to 4 and North bid 5. Partner doubled and all passed.

You lead the K and partner plays the 3 (standard or right-side up signals). Is that discouraging, count or suit preference.

The article made a big point that it must be suit preference and West should trust his partner and shift to a club. Indeed, a club shift would set the contract. Here are all four hands:

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

What's wrong with this picture? Why can't partner overtake the K himself instead of taking a chance that partner can't read the 3?

You can read the column if you click here.

4 comments:

  1. The only issue with overtaking the SK in order to switch to Clubs is the risk of having the SJ being promoted to be a useful discard when declarer has the singleton SQ.
    It is not uncommon to lead unsupported K/Q in partner's suit when one would like to retain the lead in order to make a knowledgeable switch at trick two.
    Alter slightly the layout to give the opening leader a hand with Kxxx Spades instead of KQxx and I think the SK stands out as the correct lead - overtaking the K in this case would result in having one smug declarer and a disgruntled partner.

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  2. This is too big a gap for me to bridge!

    You're funny! Fall out of the canoe and break the law! Heh. Heh!

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  3. I don't get it. Why should that be a suit preference signal?
    - partner showed only 5 spades
    - declarer never made a high-level aggressive bid, lefty did (due to 5 trumps). Declarer can easily have 2 spades.

    Of course, playing odd-even, there's no problem. Partner is known to have spade length, so a low even card (the 4) indicates a) switch b) clubs please. I've heard a claim that such signaling (used world wide ~50 years as Italian signals) is illegal in the U.S., so maybe that's an issue.

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  4. @Arik: yes, there's some chance pard led the king for Kxxx AND the discard will be useful. That must be weighed against the chance West won't read the low spade.

    @Amnon Harel: I might be wrong, but I think you can used odd/even discards in ACBL-land, but only as a discard, not as a signal to partner's led card.

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