Thursday, May 10, 2012

Playing on Bridge Base Online with the mighty robots, I picked up:
A J 5 A K J 7 6 4 3 10 7 3.

I opened 1, left-hand opponent passed and partner bid 4 (a splinter bid), and RHO doubled. Over to you.

I didn't see any good way to get the robot to cooperate, so I asked for key cards with 4NT. Partner had one and I closed it out with 6.

West led the J and here are the North-South hands:

East won the ace and exited with the 3. Now what?

You can ruff your club loser, but you only have 11 sure tricks in the form of: two spades, seven hearts, one diamond and a club ruff in dummy.

Before you decide how to play, let me give you a hint. The robots almost never lead away from the Q in a case like this, so sticking in the J won't work. I decided my best shot was if West had the Q and long diamonds. In that case I have an easy squeeze against him. If that doesn't develop, maybe the Q will drop.

I won the A, led a diamond to the ace and ruffed a diamond. I drew trumps (they were 1-1) and ruffed another diamond. I ruffed my club loser and ran hearts. Here was the layout with one trump to cash:

Haha, look at what West did. I don't know how bots "think," but apparently he could see he was going to be squeezed, so he discarded down to the singleton Q.

Here are all four hands:


For making slam, I scored 97.3%. Of the 38 players, 21 bid slam and went set. Fourteen bid and made game. Three of us bid and made slam. It was a baby squeeze, but you had to see to ruff out the diamonds (this is called isolating the menace) to set it up. You also had to win the ace when spades were led to keep the king in dummy for an entry. Notice that if dummy had a low club and the king was the Q, it would be a laydown contract. But then, however, there wouldn't be a story, would there?

6 comments:

  1. couple of things i don't get, hoping you can explain in more detail!
    1) why does the guy in west keep the 10c over a low spade?
    2) why do you say it's important to keep the Ks in hand for entry to dummy when you don't seem to have needed/used it?

    ty!

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  2. You are saying that there were four left and no chop was negotiated, right?

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Predictable opponents!

    Nicely played, though.

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  5. @Ken: LOL

    @Mudwig: 1. it didn't matter which one West kept, so he kept the club, hoping I would make a mistake. 2. If he discards his Kd, my jack is good and the king of spades is how I get to it.

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  6. aha, i see thanks.
    any which way he is left with either qs xs or qs kd and in each case he discards first so you win both tricks.

    gg wp all in imo

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