[PhantomSac]

Scoring: IMP

---

You get to 7D no opposing bidding, on the CQ lead. How do you play? Is the level of your opps relevant?

[gnasher]

Cover the club. Cash ♦A. If they're not 4-0, ruff a spade high. Run trumps and spades to showup squeeze LHO.

[fred]

gnasher, on Mar 8 2010, 12:37 AM, said:

Cover the club.  Cash ♦A.  If they're not 4-0, ruff a spade high.  Run trumps and spades to showup squeeze LHO.

I don't think you should cover the club, especially if you want ego points for the cool squeeze that will result.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[655321]

Double dummy you are cold (assuming a spade ruff stands up) by not covering the club and coming down to AK of hearts and KT of clubs in dummy, but you would have to read the position. Against bad players, or if you are confident of picking who has pitched down to a singleton club this would be best.

[PhantomSac]

Well that was quick. Yeah the showup sqz is obv the right technical line, but if you can read the opps then you are 100 % on the trump squeeze.

Obv I figured I was like 100 % to guess it right I think vs very good opps I would not go for it, but against anyone else I would.

[fred]

An interesting property of what I call a "double trump squeeze" is, in that position, you squeeze both opponents in the same two suits (which does not happen in a "normal" double squeeze).

Here is the template I keep in my brain:

---

South to lead with clubs as trump. Declarer needs the rest of the tricks.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[gnasher]

Shouldn't the spade suit in your template be QJ-K10-Ax? KJ is unnecessarily restrictive.

[Siegmund]

Apparently I have a small ego. Or a history of being a bad guesser, one of the two. At the table it wouldn't have crossed my mind to try anything other than the showup.

[jdonn]

gnasher, on Mar 8 2010, 03:49 AM, said:

Shouldn't the spade suit in your template be QJ-K10-Ax? KJ is unnecessarily restrictive.

I think your way is more restrictive. It requires an extra card to be in a certain place with the defense since Qx AJ wouldn't work. I guess it's all in how you look at it.

[PhantomSac]

RHO had 4 spades and 1 diamond. On the penultimate trump, he pitched a club, keeping his spade loser, so I knew he hadn't stiffed the ace so it was auto to pin leftys jack later.

Maybe there is a lesson there in playing the trump before the spade heh (had I stripped him of his spade loser first, this inference wouldn't have been available).

[gnasher]

PhantomSac, on Mar 8 2010, 04:10 PM, said:

RHO had 4 spades and 1 diamond. On the penultimate trump, he pitched a club, keeping his spade loser, so I knew he hadn't stiffed the ace so it was auto to pin leftys jack later.

Maybe there is a lesson there in playing the trump before the spade heh (had I stripped him of his spade loser first, this inference wouldn't have been available).

Are you saying that you didn't ruff your spade loser? If so, I can't see how anybody would have been squeezed.

[jdonn]

gnasher, on Mar 8 2010, 10:32 AM, said:

PhantomSac, on Mar 8 2010, 04:10 PM, said:

RHO had 4 spades and 1 diamond. On the penultimate trump, he pitched a club, keeping his spade loser, so I knew he hadn't stiffed the ace so it was auto to pin leftys jack later.

Maybe there is a lesson there in playing the trump before the spade heh (had I stripped him of his spade loser first, this inference wouldn't have been available).

Are you saying that you didn't ruff your spade loser? If so, I can't see how anybody would have been squeezed.

He's saying he ruffed the spade loser but with 3 winners left in his hand (2 trumps and a good spade) he played a trump before the spade. That way he felt he could read that when his untricky RHO pitched a club on that trick he hadn't bared the ace, because with Ax of clubs left he would have thrown his spade instead (that Justin found out he had on the next trick).

[PhantomSac]

gnasher, on Mar 8 2010, 10:32 AM, said:

PhantomSac, on Mar 8 2010, 04:10 PM, said:

RHO had 4 spades and 1 diamond. On the penultimate trump, he pitched a club, keeping his spade loser, so I knew he hadn't stiffed the ace so it was auto to pin leftys jack later.

Maybe there is a lesson there in playing the trump before the spade heh (had I stripped him of his spade loser first, this inference wouldn't have been available).

Are you saying that you didn't ruff your spade loser? If so, I can't see how anybody would have been squeezed.

I played:

C ruffed, DA, 3 rounds of spades ruff with jack, then trumps (keeping 1). Just saying leaving the high spade as the squeeze card instead of the more natural trump is better because it gives them more chance to tell you something useful (by either pitching their spade, or not pitching their spade). Maybe that is obvious though.

[EricK]

But isn't it obvious (to them) that you still have the master spade and are going to play it next? So it can never cost to keep hold of the spade.

If you had been on defense and held the club Ace, would you have discarded the spade or bared the Ace?

[ceeb]

EricK, on Mar 10 2010, 03:40 AM, said:

But isn't it obvious (to them) that you still have the master spade and are going to play it next? So it can never cost to keep hold of the spade.

If you had been on defense and held the club Ace, would you have discarded the spade or bared the Ace?

South plays ♦, dummy ♥, East ?

---

The instinctive play from East is to keep the same shape as dummy. No doubt it's the wrong play (and any counting East knows the lie of the cards) on sufficient analysis. A moron defender throws a spade hoping that the next trick will never come. But it takes a very alert East, not just a non-moron, to realize that declarer is planning to discard ♥J rather than ♣ on the next trick.

Justin's idea of saving the spade to play as the squeeze card brings to mind Nabokov's explanation of a "quiet move" in chess in Invitation to a Beheading. The idea is so simple it's easy to overlook how subtle and strong it is.

[nige1]

Pretty deal. Brilliant to get it right, at the table. George Coffin published a repeating (double-dummy) version, with an ending something like this. ♠ trump, South leads to make all the tricks.

---