The bridge season traditionally starts here in the first week of September. We kicked off quite well, with +63 imp’s in the Wednesday imp pairs, winning the first masterpoints and a bottle of wine for the season.
Both the last session I played in the previous season, on August 31st, and this session featured this common but apparently not-well-know suit combination.
West leads the ♠J in this position, spades being an unbid suit and without any other clues from the auction. Dummy comes down. Declarer plays small in dummy and you contribute the ???
This is a situation where you should not follow the general principle of third hand high. Partner’s lead denies the ♠Q, so declarer figures to hold the ♠Kx(...). If you go up with the ♠A, declarer can later score the ♠K and ♠Q for 2 tricks.
If you duck, declarer will win the ♠K but later has to lose 2 tricks. Simple, once you think of it. Of course, this also works with the ♠Qx(...) in dummy and thus ♠Kx(...) in declarer’s hand. (And if you systematically lead the ♠J from ♠KJ10, the ♠J will simply hold the trick, while contributing the ♠A will possibly allow declarer to set up the ♠Q).
And in practice?
First this hand from yesterday’s session. South plays 4♥ after an uninformative action with no bidding by EW. West led the ♦J and east got it right by playing a small but encouraging small on the lead and declarer won the trick. Declarer continued with a spade to the ♠A and a trump, won by west. Now, west didn’t realize that partner should have ducked the ♦A in this position and continued with a trump where either minor would have defeated the contract right way. Declarer suddenly had a chance: win the ♥A, play 2 spades discarding a diamond and ruff the third. ♦K, east wins but is then endplayed. NS scored a nice plus, though the hand wasn’t always defeated on a diamond lead on the other tables.
There is, of course, one exception to this rule.
If you suspect that declarer can have a singleton, you should not duck but play the ace. This hand came up last Saturday, in a pairs tournament in Antwerp. 4♥ on the ♦J lead, small and east? East ducked, when she tried to cash the ♦A later, it was ruffed. Yes, declarer can easily have a singleton diamond. As this was matchpoints, that was an expensive overtrick, turning an average board into 90% for NS.
Other bridge news: the Dutch federation has launched a site dedicated to the upcoming world championships: topbridge.nl, with news, interviews and background information. Well worth visiting. Kees Tammens also started to take bets on the upcoming Bermuda Bowl. He also posted a couple of nice interviews with the Dutch team. Finally, I’m still taking bets in the BBBB.