THE BRIDGE WORLD Bridge Movie:
Unsqueezing with
a Bold Queen
Phillip Alder
and Richard Zeckhauser, Cambridge, Massachusetts
by
When West leads the heart ten against
your slam in an imp match at a regional
tournament, best play will require that
you draw accurate inferences.
East dealer
Both sides vulnerable
North
8A4
%Q643
&AQJ
6AJ52
South
8KQJ6532
%A2
&5
6863
South West
NorthEast
–—–—–—Pass
1 8 Pass2 6Pass
2 8
Pass
2 NT
Pass
4 8 Pass5 &Pass
5 % Pass6 8
(All Pass)
What is revealed by the bidding and
the lead?
If East held the king of diamonds,
he might have doubled five diamonds,
and West might have tried to attack
dummy’s side entry to the club suit. So
West is a heavy favorite to hold the dia
mond king. If he also has a club honor,
which he will think might be finessable,
he might well have led a heart from the
king to try to dislodge the ace or perhaps to avoid leading a singleton trump.
Preserving dummy’s heart queen is
tempting. If East has the heart king at
most tripleton, you could build an extra
heart trick. But in that layout, there is
another promising option, so you try
dummy’s queen and are mildly disappointed when East covers with the king.
ble? We think very few. That shift might
enable declarer, with a singleton diamond, to avoid the need to guess which
defender holds the king. Moveover, that
play looks unnatural, particularly compared to safely returning a heart.
Your East is not a heavyweight. He
routinely returns the heart jack to your
ace. Now you can choose squeezing
West between diamonds and hearts
or, if he has the king-queen of clubs,
between diamonds and clubs (but you
can’t combine those chances).
How can you decide which holding is
more likely?
Test West by leading a low club.
Only a stellar defender would not split
from king-queen or would play an unaccompanied royal.
West plays low; you take dummy’s
club ace and spade ace (all follow), then
ruff a heart high as East contributes the
eight and West the nine, the card he is
known to hold.
How do you proceed?
What now?
One possibility is to take the first
trick, finesse in diamonds, pitch a heart
on the diamond ace, and hope that
West began with the club king-queen.
However, that parlay cannot be a better
chance than about one in six. A more
promising prospect is a red-suit squeeze
against West, holding the diamond king
and at least four hearts. To rectify the
count, duck trick one.
If that squeeze will work, what is
East’s best defense?
He can shift to a diamond, breaking
the link for the squeeze when declarer
has a singleton. What percentage of top
players would find that play at the ta30 DECEMBER 2013 Clues from hearts and clubs point
in the same direction. Go for the redsuit squeeze (by discarding clubs from
dummy on spades). The deal might be:
North
8A4
%Q643
&AQJ
6AJ52
WestEast
8 10 9 8
87
% 10 9 7 5
%KJ8
& K 7 4
& 10 9 8 6 3 2
6 Q 9 7
6 K 10 4
South
8KQJ6532
%A2
&5
6863
After the opening lead, how could
West have defeated the contract?
By playing the club queen on the
early club lead toward dummy. Though
extremely hard to find at the table,
that play is analyzable, as it can’t lose
against any plausible holding, given a
modestly capable declarer. That bold
queen would have acted to unsqueeze
West. If, however, a significant hesitation preceded the queen-play, observing
that inserting an unaccompanied queen
can be determined to be safe, a Sherlock
Holmes at the wheel would revert to the
red suit squeeze.
In a similar deal from a regional in Atlanta (reported in The New York Times),
South won trick one, led a diamond to
dummy’s queen, and discarded a heart
on the diamond ace. West’s doubleton
king of diamonds dropped; his shape
was 4=4=2=3. If the play had started as
in the movie, when East showed out on
the ace of spades, declarer would have
needed to ruff a heart low.
31