Both Vul
IMPs
Dealer: East
Lead: 
A
timo K 8 5 3 2 10 4 4 3 Q 9 5 2 |
||
| laurel Q 7 K 9 7 3 A K J 2 K 10 8 |
![[W - E]](http://gee.aaronhaspel.com/files/2012/10/t.gif) |
kayla J 4 A Q 8 6 5 10 6 5 6 4 3 |
| Maestro A 10 9 6 J 2 Q 9 8 7 A J 7 |
| West
1NT |
North
2 |
East Pass 2NT 4 |
South 1 3 Pass |
Yesterday we had a brief respite, a hand where Gee’s play, though bad, was possibly the best at the table. We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.
The score was tied in a team game when today’s hand came down, the last in a ten-board match.
The bidding is pretty normal. N/S go down 1 in three spades, but East, with most of the opponents’ high cards marked, takes a flyer at the heart game.
Gee leads the SA and continues spades. Timo, North, wins the second spade and shifts to a club; Gee cashes his ace and leads another. Now declarer, after pulling trump in two rounds, needs four diamond tricks to make: how do you play the suit?
The book says you play the ace and finesse the jack on the second round if the queen doesn’t drop; this wins against Qxx or Qx onside, or a singleton queen in either hand, for around 30%. In this case, however, Gee is almost certainly marked with the DQ for his opening bid; N/S have 16 points and Timo has already shown up with the spade king and a club honor. Furthermore Gee can have no more than six cards in the majors, so with seven in the minors he must have at least four diamonds.
Is it hopeless? Not quite. Declarer leads the D10; and Gee, holding Q987 and looking at AKJx in dummy, plays low. Declarer repeats the finesse and claims. Now it might look to STCPs™ like me that the contract always goes down as long as Gee covers the 10; it even looks that way to Timo, who asks Gee why he didn’t. “It didn’t matter,” Gee explains, “because she could ruff the fourth round of diamonds anyway.”
Gee was entirely correct in stating that the fourth round of diamonds can be ruffed in hand. The only fly in that ointment is that it still leaves the small matter of a losing club. The problem with a paucity of winners is the corollary of a surfeit of losers, a point which may easily be overlooked in the heat of battle, even by an expert defender such as Gee.
Actually, knowing that south is 4-2 in the majors and therefore has at least 4 diamonds, the only possible play to make is AK of diamonds, playing for Kxxxx Tx Qx Jxxx opposite AT9x Jx xxxx AQx. Of course, this presumes that you expect a cover. But hey, sometimes it’s easy to confuse “second hand low” and “cover an honor with an honor.” I certainly don’t blame him!
Covering is double dummy aaron, you are too hard on G.
Gee did open a diamomd in second position vul with 4-2 in majors, so he clearly holds 4 diamonds. So the choice is to play him for Axxx,jx,9xxx,Aqx (and drop the qD) or Axxx, jx,qxxx,A(q or j)x and play for Gee to misdefend. I leave it to others to do the sums…