When I drove home from the club yesterday evening, the radio was playing a song from the US band “the Four Tops”. For those of you not familiar with the band, this is Motown music from the 1960‘s. I’m not a big fan of this. It is a bit like fast-food, you know that there is a lot better stuff on the market, but once in a while, I can appreciate a song or two. At that point, I thought I had scored exactly four tops at the duplicate earlier that day. That is enough coincidence, or enough of a weak excuse if you like, to write a blog about these hands. Names have been changed in order to protect the innocent.
First, this one. The first round of bidding is obvious. I’d prefer a double over 2♥ though, it is quite likely that east had a penalty pass of 2♥ and then your hand is great for defending. And if partner doesn’t have a penalty pass, then you want to keep the minors in the picture. However, I can live with 2♠ and it worked out very nicely when Chelsea in the north seat decided that she had not bid enough yet and tried a completely incomprehensible 3♥. East knew what to do. Double dummy, north can take 7 tricks in a heart contract, but after a trump lead, she lost control for down 3.
The auction on board 2 was more interesting, in particular in a matchpoints setting. When 1♣-1♥-2♥ is passed out, is it obvious for the 4th hand to take some action with the appropriate shape (444-1♥ or similar). Partner will have a few high cards and your side likely has a fit. However, it is also possible that the player with the right shape sits over the 2♥ bidder and his partner, in 4th seat, has some values but a flat hand. In order to avoid being shut-out, the player with shape should act in this situation regardless of his position at the table. This is known as pre-balancing. Of course, the partner of the pre-balancer should give him a bit of leeway when bidding. Here north had the right shape and did act, south wasn’t fully up to speed with these arguments and NS were about to score -800. East came to the rescue though. East made the obvious 9 tricks on a ♠Q lead, but as the field was in 4♥, that meant an extra undertrick and a bottom score.
Next board. The auction explains itself and double-dummy, the contract can go down a lot: spade lead ducked to east. Declarer will probably play a diamond, south goes up and plays a spade to the ace setting up that suit while north still has a top diamond as an entery. Even if declarer drops the ♣Q, the defense can take at least 7 tricks.
In practice, play went slightly different. ♠10 lead to the ♠K. ♦J ducked by both defenders and a diamond to the ♦10, ♦Q and ♦K. ♥6 back to the ♥7, ♥9 and ♥4. So-far, the defense has managed to remove the entry to spade suit when that is eventually set up and things got worse from here. In trick 5, south led the ♠2, ♠5, ducked by north and the ♠Q. I’m not sure why Frederique ducked this trick, as her partner is unlikely to have 3 spades and her hand is thus entry less. Better take the ♠A, declarer is going to make one another spade anyway. Now declarer could cross to the ♣A and play third round of diamonds. South couldn’t think of anything better to do than play the ♥A and a heart. 9 tricks, the only plus score with the EW cards.
Finally this one. I still don’t understand why partner bid 1♥ rather than the more obvious 1♠, but it did give EW a good start by discovering their fit right away. Looking at the hand records, I cannot understand that north passed 2♥ with his 16 count, but that is what he did in practice. He was right in some sense as NS cannot make 3NT and 5♣ requires that declarer takes the right view. The downside is that 2♥ makes for 110, which is less than 3NT -1.
When checking the results the next day, I noticed another thing 3 pairs managed to make 3NT on a heart lead, or rather, EW managed to block the heart suit. I’m not sure how that happened. If the first trick went ♥8 (or ♥7), small, king, small, as seems reasonable, all west has to do is to return a small heart. Even if you don’t have agreements on which specific card to return, the trick will be covered by the ♥J, ♥Q and ♥A. it should be obvious to east that west has ♥9xx left and thus cash his hearts in the order 10 and 8.
So much for our 4 tops, unfortunately, we didn’t do as well on the other boards and thus ended up a little above average.
I wrote most of this article yesterday evening but decided to call it a day before it was completely done. This morning, I checked the scores and discovered a late score change resulting in a fifth top.
Here it is. We benefitted from our methods here, with 1♦ showing 4. 2♦ in the first round would have showed the regular 6-9 with 4 card support. Now that west failed to bid 2♦ on the first round, she must be very weak when she bid 2♦ on her second turn. 2♦ is cold and NS have to play spades very early on in order to stop the overtrick. That is hard to find, EW +110, again the only plus score with the EW cards.