[FrancesHinden]

Another hand from the Tenerife Open Pairs final.

Scoring: MP

---

You are West.
Partner opened 1S, passed round to LHO who bid 2H.
RHO tried 2NT and LHO gave it 3NT.

You lead the 4 of spades, and it goes 6, A, 10.
Partner plays back the 9 of spades, declarer puts the Jack in, what do you discard?

[Echognome]

Tough question. It looks like Declarer has KJ10 of spades and partner's 9 would indicate a heart entry (If playing standard suit preference). Kx or Kxx. Thus I cannot afford to throw a heart as dummy has a certain club entry. This leads me to which minor suit to throw away from. I believe I can help more in clubs rather than diamonds (partner only needs J9 or J with declarer misguessing), so I will throw a small diamond (or 7 if playing count).

[mike777]

3 of clubs
Playing o/e this is encouraging in clubs

[FrancesHinden]

Echognome, on Jul 3 2005, 12:06 PM, said:

It looks like Declarer has KJ10 of spades and partner's 9 would indicate a heart entry (If playing standard suit preference).

There are 3 possible interpretations of partner's 9.

1a. It's showing a heart entry, telling you that declarer isn't running the hearts and we're trying to beat the contract not hold the overtricks.

1b. It's telling you he has more in diamonds than clubs, as he can see you might be guessing what to discard on the spade. If it is suit preference, I would go with this one, but this could do with some discussion.

2. Declarer has KJ107 of spades and was hoping a spade back would give him an entry to table with the 8; partner is preventing this.

[Echognome]

If we believe the preventing entry story, then the only use for this is if declarer has xx, x, K, or void hearts. Either way I must guard hearts. I still guess to throw diamonds as they seem the least useful.

[inquiry]

♦9. next

[Winstonm]

It appears that partner had 5 minor suit cards; most likely they are divided 3/2, if so the only 5-card suit declarer can hold is diamonds. I'm going to to abandon the clubs suit and try to stop the diamond run and protect hearts and diamonds.

WinstonM

[Fluffy]

I played this hand on this way 2 days ago, and West didn't guess very well so I made 3NT comfortably.

[mike777]

Echognome, on Jul 3 2005, 12:06 PM, said:

Tough question. It looks like Declarer has KJ10 of spades and partner's 9 would indicate a heart entry (If playing standard suit preference).

9 as heart what?

Note p could have returned the Q and not the 9 so they are telling us something here and not just making random returns I assume?

[FrancesHinden]

Fluffy, on Jul 3 2005, 01:29 PM, said:

I played this hand on this way 2 days ago, and West didn't guess very well so I made 3NT comfortably.

We've worked out that Fluffy was declarer on this hand.
He's right, I didn't guess well and 3NT did indeed make comfortably.

[flytoox]

I will discard a club. Pd rates to have 6223. He should have SAQ and HK. I think there are a few questions which will help us deciding what to throw.

1) Why pd didnot duck spade?
I think he should, but perhaps he made a mistake. Or he doesnt want to be throwed in.

2) Why pd didnot switch to diamond when he knows there is no future in spade? His holding in diamond must persuade him from doing so. Perhaps he has DAQ. In this case discarding a diamond would be fatal.

[Free]

Seems like a clear ♦ discard to me... Btw, if this is a real triple squeeze, then I can't have a good discard anyway, so either the topic title is wrong, or there's no good solution to this problem.

[MickyB]

I presume it is a pseudo triple squeeze...close enough!

[Fluffy]

I am not fully sure, but I think the contract will make on any discard

[FrancesHinden]

Fluffy knows the full hand, but it seems only fair to let everyone else into the secret. A diamond is the best discard.

Scoring: MP

3NT by South

---

You are triple squeezed in the sense that you are guarding all 3 suits, but the 4th round of diamonds is pretty irrelevant.

At the table I came up with some slightly convoluted reasoning: dummy's clubs were so good that declarer was more likely to have diamond length that mattered, so I discarded a club. This made declarer's life very easy, as you can see.

Partner's thoughts at trick one were that he had 3 entries, so he should be able to set his spades up eventually. He admits he didn't think to duck the spade as he couldn't see why it could possibly matter... having seen my problem at trick two he does now! When declarer unblocked at trick one, he looked like he was angling for entries to table, which is why partner played the 9 back. We debated that the Queen might have been better, as he had more in diamonds than clubs, which might have led me to discard a diamond. Possibly. (It's always good to work out why the misdefence was partner's fault.)

As for the full hand... Mr Rosenberg would object, but I used DF as my analysis isn't as good as his. 3NT is off genuinely if partner ducks the opening lead (as flytoox recommended) and then defends absolutely passively. Having risen on the first spade, if I had discarded a diamond at trick 2, declarer needs to continue with the Jack of clubs from hand at trick 3 to generate sufficient entries to dummy, which is very non-obvious (he didn't play the CJ at the table, and I could have discarded from a 5-card suit).

[mike777]

FrancesHinden, on Jul 8 2005, 02:00 PM, said:

Fluffy knows the full hand, but it seems only fair to let everyone else into the secret.  A diamond is the best discard.

Scoring: MP

3NT by South

---

You are triple squeezed in the sense that you are guarding all 3 suits, but the 4th round of diamonds is pretty irrelevant.

At the table I came up with some slightly convoluted reasoning: dummy's clubs were so good that declarer was more likely to have diamond length that mattered, so I discarded a club. This made declarer's life very easy, as you can see.

Partner's thoughts at trick one were that he had 3 entries, so he should be able to set his spades up eventually. He admits he didn't think to duck the spade as he couldn't see why it could possibly matter... having seen my problem at trick two he does now!  When declarer unblocked at trick one, he looked like he was angling for entries to table, which is why partner played the 9 back. We debated that the Queen might have been better, as he had more in diamonds than clubs, which might have led me to discard a diamond. Possibly. (It's always good to work out why the misdefence was partner's fault.)

As for the full hand... Mr Rosenberg would object, but I used DF as my analysis isn't as good as his. 3NT is off genuinely if partner ducks the opening lead (as flytoox recommended) and then defends absolutely passively.  Having risen on the first spade, if I had discarded a diamond at trick 2, declarer needs to continue with the Jack of clubs from hand at trick 3 to generate sufficient entries to dummy, which is very non-obvious (he didn't play the CJ at the table, and I could have discarded from a 5-card suit).

ahhh... As is usual in the forum, the bidding or in this case defense, is really partner's fault. Once again we are forced to try and save him.

[FrancesHinden]

Quote

ahhh... As is usual in the forum, the bidding or in this case defense, is really partner's fault. Once again we are forced to try and save him.

As a side point, when either one of the partnership could have beaten the contract but it made, do you play "first mistake" or "last mistake" rules?

("first mistake" - you let it through first, it's your fault
"last mistake" - but you had the last chance to beat it and you didn't, it's your fault)

[mike777]

FrancesHinden, on Jul 8 2005, 02:27 PM, said:

Quote

ahhh... As is usual in the forum, the bidding or in this case defense, is really partner's fault. Once again we are forced to try and save him.

As a side point, when either one of the partnership could have beaten the contract but it made, do you play "first mistake" or "last mistake" rules?

("first mistake" - you let it through first, it's your fault
"last mistake" - but you had the last chance to beat it and you didn't, it's your fault)

Serious answer is that often the second mistake is the fatal one, the first one is just to wake up partner.

Bar answer is ..partner I know you had k of hearts, return Q of spades to show diamond cards and 9 to show clubs cards. First mistake was not ducking, second was returning wrong card if must return one. If you had returned Qs I know to throw a diamond . Well it is a bar answer.

[Fluffy]

I must admit the thing I mostenjoied fromthedefence was that ♣
A was won on first trick of the suit, giving me 2 way comunication. DF doesn't know, but if your partner ducked I would had still verymuch trouble.