Jun 14 2009
Don’t Squeeze Your Partner
Playing in a local club game with Lance, we’re white on red and i hold Q K6 AKTxxx KQJ7. Partner preempts 2S, rightie passes, and i see nothing to do but bid 3NT. As partner is laying down the dummy, he says, “well, the only real good thing about this hand is that i have a straight flush.” The lead is the 2H, and i see he is right:
 A5432
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T853
Jx
9xIf the diamonds come in, i can count six diamonds, a heart and a spade for eight tricks. The hearts look to be 4-3. A spade switch would be most unwelcome. Still, my hand is entirely unknown, so if i work on clubs, perhaps they will switch to a diamond instead.
I play low from dummy, hoping for an honor to fly. Annoyingly, rho puts in the 7 and i must win my King. I “sneakily” lead the QC from my hand, hoping to disguise my honor holding. RHO wins the AC and leads back the 9H. This, surprisingly, rides around to my ten in dummy. Both defenders are good players; they must both be playing me for another honor in hearts. Rightie must have started with Q97 or J9x, unless leftie has led the 2H from five of them?
In any case, this gives me a valuable entry to dummy to take the diamond finesse; without it, i would have had to knock the spades wide open. I lead the JD and rightie covers. I run six diamonds at them. Leftie pitches three spades while rightie has come under pressure and parts with two spades, his JH and finally a club.
It appears my ruse in clubs had some effect, as lefty felt he needed to hold the Txx of clubs, not knowing they were worthless. He left his partner to guard both spades and the long club, and he could not handle both. In the end, my club 7 grew up, and i took six diamonds, two hearts, three clubs and a spade for twelve tricks.
This was the full hand. Obviously on the heart lead they should have held me to ten tricks, but once they gave me a second heart trick they could have held me to eleven. You can see that if leftie discards all his clubs, and keeps at least two spades, rightie can unguard spades and hold onto the clubs. Of course, a spade lead would have set the hand.
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| T76
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KJ98
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