[billw55]

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This is the follow up to my recent opening lead poll. East chose the ♣3, which was the heavy favorite in the poll.

Now you see dummy. You may not agree wtih his bidding, but that is out of your hands. Trick one goes ♣3-T-J-Q. Declarer returns a small club, partner following to this and one more club, dummy pitching a diamond and a heart. What are your thoughts from here, and how do you continue?

[manudude03]

Partner doesn't have much more than the ♥Q. The danger is he has something along the lines of Jxxxx QTxx x xxx which exposes him to a squeeze. Since any other layout dooms declarer or 9 cold tricks (in which case, why did he exit a club?) or maybe a 2-way finesse in hearts (declarer having xx KTx Axxx Qxxx- in fact, if we cash our clubs here, defence is getting double squeezed* if we cash all our clubs). I'll return a heart after winning trick 2, and then when I get in again to cash the rest of the clubs, lead another heart.

EDIT: * it's not a true double squeeze, more like a simple squeeze played as a double

edited agai: my first possible hand only had 12 cards

[MrAce]

Deleted i didnt see the part it says pd follows 3rd ♣

manudude03, on 2012-February-11, 18:47, said:

Partner doesn't have much more than the ♥Q. The danger is he has something along the lines of Jxxx QTxx x xxx which exposes him to a squeeze. Since any other layout dooms declarer or 9 cold tricks (in which case, why did he exit a club?) or maybe a 2-way finesse in hearts (declarer having xx KTx Axxx Qxxx- in fact, if we cash our clubs here, defence is getting double squeezed if we cash all our clubs). I'll return a heart after winning trick 2, and then when I get in again to cash the rest of the clubs, lead another heart.

Yeah but he says we already cashed 3rd ♣

[billw55]

I guess I should clarify: if you choose to cash the third round of clubs, partner follows.

[BunnyGo]

billw55, on 2012-February-11, 19:00, said:

I guess I should clarify: if you choose to cash the third round of clubs, partner follows.

Yeah...i was trying to decide if I should try and keep transportation open and switch right away.

[gnasher]

I'd play a spade after the second round of clubs. If declarer wants a third round of clubs played, it's going to cost him an entry.

A heart switch looks very risky - declarer could easily have K10x.

[MrAce]

billw55, on 2012-February-11, 19:00, said:

I guess I should clarify: if you choose to cash the third round of clubs, partner follows.

Ok then, declarer can not have both K and Q of ♥ due to discarding a ♥ from dummy. that makes him to hold ♦ A obvious, so playing ♦ A for pd is a dream.

Declarer's tricks are 3♠+2♥+2♦+1♣ so pd has to have ♠J.



If declarer has

xx
Kxx
Axxx
Qxxx

We have to play ♥ now as Manu said BUT we need to avoid cashing the 5th♣ or he still makes. Declarer takes ♥ in hand and plays 3rd ♣, we take this cash 1 more , leaving last ♣ we need to play 2nd ♥ imo.

[MrAce]

Andy is probably correct, declarer doesnt see our hand and even when he doesnt have the ♥ T he may try to score by finessing ♥ 3♥+1♣+2♦+3♠

[billw55]

OK, that pretty much answers my question, so I'll give the full hand.

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I haven't figued out how to put the play into the diagrams, so I'll have to do this the long way:

♣3-T-J-Q
♣6-9-♦4-♣7
♣A-♥5-♣8-4
♣K-♦6-♠3-♣5
♣2-♥6-♥2-♦3
♥4-J-Q-K
♥3-8-A-7
♦K-5-7-2
♦T

.. and west was stuck. I was declarer on this hand, and was feeling pretty good. This may be pretty simple for most of you, but it is only fairly recently that I have started foreseeing squeeze chances and then executing them. Although, is this even the best line on this hand?

Later reviewing the hand, I realized east could beat me by not cashing out the clubs. So I got to wondering: how routine is it to find such defense? I got my answer quite promptly, pretty much everyone was all over it. It was kinda spooky how accurately people described the closed hands

Anyway, thank you for participating in my little survey.

[MrAce]

billw55, on 2012-February-12, 11:52, said:

OK, that pretty much answers my question, so I'll give the full hand.

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I haven't figued out how to put the play into the diagrams, so I'll have to do this the long way:

♣3-T-J-Q
♣6-9-♦4-♣7
♣A-♥5-♣8-4
♣K-♦6-♠3-♣5
♣2-♥6-♥2-♦3
♥4-J-Q-K
♥3-8-A-7
♦K-5-7-2
♦T

.. and west was stuck. I was declarer on this hand, and was feeling pretty good. This may be pretty simple for most of you, but it is only fairly recently that I have started foreseeing squeeze chances and then executing them. Although, is this even the best line on this hand?

Later reviewing the hand, I realized east could beat me by not cashing out the clubs. So I got to wondering: how routine is it to find such defense? I got my answer quite promptly, pretty much everyone was all over it. It was kinda spooky how accurately people described the closed hands

Anyway, thank you for participating in my little survey.

Regardless you played good.

[whereagles]

billw55, on 2012-February-12, 11:52, said:

Later reviewing the hand, I realized east could beat me by not cashing out the clubs. So I got to wondering: how routine is it to find such defense? I got my answer quite promptly, pretty much everyone was all over it. It was kinda spooky how accurately people described the closed hands

Since you put this on the forum, we smelled a rat and rushed to check out what cashing the clubs would lead to

In practice I've yet to see a defender showing such foresight

[phil_20686]

billw55, on 2012-February-12, 11:52, said:

I haven't figued out how to put the play into the diagrams, so I'll have to do this the long way:

Later reviewing the hand, I realized east could beat me by not cashing out the clubs. So I got to wondering: how routine is it to find such defense? I got my answer quite promptly, pretty much everyone was all over it. It was kinda spooky how accurately people described the closed hands

Anyway, thank you for participating in my little survey.

When declarer plays your suit back at you you should smell a rat at the table too. Normally in such situations they are either rectifying the count or you are just endplayed. Here its obvious that you will have safe spade exits so the endplay is out.


Agree with where eagles point in general though, much easier to spot squeeze defence in problems, as you tend to be given the problem at the relevant point. If they give you a discard problem and you seem to have lots of irrelevant small cards easy to reason that its a squeeze problem...at the table you just thoughtlessly discard apparently irrelevant small cards.

You played well to give the defence a chance to go wrong.

[phil_20686]

Incidently, if east does switch to the spade 8, you might still guess to make it by csahing AKQ AK and exiting a club, east had to discard a minor suit card, you are cold for 3 minor suit tricks now anytime leader has three diamonds, though in practice you would lose to QJ offside.