Posted 2014-January-22, 12:19
ok 12 tricks on top and since its MP that 13th trick might be worth a lot. There are two
very legitimate shots for 13 tricks and the first is presented at trick 1 what card to play
to the spade lead. You can play the nine hoping lho began life with JT(xxx) (but probably
w/o the 8 since J would be much more likely then) OR you can play low hoping rho has
to insert the J or T and we can finesse lho for the other honor.
Assuming we guess wrong at trick 1 (ie if you play low rho inserts the 8 and if you play the 9 rho covers)
we still have two types of squeezes available to us and the neat part is we can try to execute both of them
in the same way to begin with.
Start off by cashing the AKQ of diamonds (pitch a heart) and hope one of the opps shows out
or you will have to guess how to proceed (you are good at guessing right?) If lho is guarding the dia and
the spades we have them caught in a simple squeeze. All we do now is cash our clubs and the heart A
reducing our hands to AKX void 3 void opposite 2 97 void A what 4 cards can lho hold when we play
our last club at trick 10? If they pitch a dia we pitch our spade from dummy and lead a spade and claim
if they pitch a spade we pitch our dia from dummy and lead a spade and claim (see hautbois).
What if rho has the long diamonds?? We go for the play that will get us written up as the player of the
week by going to a compound squeeze. We just assume lho is guarding spades and rho is guarding
diamonds (and don't forget to thank lho for not leading a heart:)).
trick 1 wind spade Q (our ill fated spade guess was wrong as usual)
trick 2 dia A
trick 3 dia K
trick 4 dia Q is no one shows out the odds favor playing rho for 4th dia due to empty spaces though we can
still play for simple squeeze against lho if lho is very short in clubs.
trick 5 6 7 clubs ending in hand and decide if it is better to go for the simple squeeze or the compound
squeeze (ie lho is not overly short in clubs and had 3 diamonds to go with presumed 4 spades). We are going
to assume rho is guarding the dia to finish out the squeeze.
trick 8 club A pitch a heart
trick 9 our hands are AQx x x void x Axx void K lead the club K what does lho pitch ? if they trhow a spade
we can pitch our dia and the spades and heart A take the rest. If they pitch a heart (which means lho has 3s 1h left)
we pitch the small spade and continue
trick 10 spade to K
trick 11 spade A our hands are now void x x void void Ax void void what 2 cards cqan RHO keep?
if they fail to keep a dia our dia is good along with heart A if they fail to keep 2 hearts our A9 will take the
last 2 tricks:)))))))))))))))))))))) who said bridge cant be fun ???????????????????????????