Bad Breaks

Today, we’ll look at a hand that has several chances to make. Declarer’s job is to figure out the plan with the highest chance of success.

Three players pass to Sally who holds  

Sally
♠ 7
♥ 76
♦ AK83
♣ AKQT32

She has 16 points in high cards and can count 2 distribution points for the 5^th and 6^th club plus one more for the second suit. That’s 19 points. She could open 1 club, but her hand will only have 4 losers with reasonable breaks in the minor suits. She decides to open with the artificial strong 2 club bid. If you would prefer to open 1 club with this hand, I wouldn’t criticize you. 

Remember that Sally’s opening 2C bid does not promise anything about clubs.

Walt, sitting to Sally’s left, passes. Sally’s partner holds

Norm
♠ KT52
♥ A32
♦ QJT4
♣ 86

That’s 10 points in high cards, and 1 distribution point for the second suit. Norm wants to make a positive response to the 2C opener. Any suit bid that he makes would imply a 5-card suit. He chooses to respond 2NT. The opponents pass at every opportunity from here on.

Norm’s positive response forces the team to game, and is a strong invitation to investigate slam. Sally isn’t crazy about NT, and she hasn’t said anything about her suits yet. Both players understand that they are going to game, and slam is a possibility. There is no reason to hurry the bidding. They should take their time to find a fit. Sally bids 3 clubs.

Norm doesn’t care for the clubs, even though Sally ought to have 5 of them for her bid. Having already denied a 5-card suit, Norm can show his 4-card suits, hoping to find a 4-4 fit. He should bid them up the line to keep the bidding low. He bids 3 diamonds.

Sally is happy with the 4-4 fit in diamonds. Sure, the 6-card club suit is pretty, but there is a guaranteed diamond fit. She decides that the team will be playing a diamond contract. Next, she needs to figure out whether the team should be in a slam or not. Even a grand slam is possible. Norm has not limited the upper end of his strength. Sally figures that if Norm has one ace, along with his other 4+ points, there should be a reasonable chance for a small slam. Sure, his ace might be the ace of spades and the rest of his points might be in spades and diamonds. That would be bad news. The opponents could take the AK of hearts off the top and set a small slam. It could happen, but that is too pessimistic. Sally bids 4NT, the Blackwood convention to find out how many aces Norm has.

Norm responds 5D showing one ace. Had Norm bid 5H, showing both of the missing aces, Sally might ask for kings to see if a grand slam were possible. But, he didn’t. Sally is satisfied with the 1 ace and bids 6 diamonds. Everyone passes.

 

Edie leads the ace of spades and Norm makes a plan for the hand

	Dummy ♠ 7 ♥ 76 ♦ AK83 ♣ AKQT32
	Norm ♠ KT52 ♥ A32 ♦ QJT4 ♣ 86

It looks pretty good, so far. There shouldn’t be any losers in diamonds unless they break 5-0. Edie’s lead just promoted the K of spades to a winner. Norm will still have 2 spade losers and 2 heart losers in his hand after losing the A of spades. He could try to ruff some spades and hearts in dummy, but that will require getting to his hand several times, and he’ll need to do all that ruffing before pulling trumps. He might be able to avoid ruffing anything if the clubs break 3-2. If that is the case, he can pull trumps, and then discard all of his losers on the clubs. But, what if they don’t break 3-2?

Let’s stop and take a look at the hand from dummy’s point of view. Dummy will lose a trick to the ace of spades and has one heart loser. Clubs might not have any losers. If that is the case, dummy can discard the losing heart on the king of spades, and everything is wonderful. If the clubs don’t break, Norm can ruff a club in his hand and the rest of the clubs will be good. That sounds like a pretty good plan. This idea of thinking of the dummy as the “long hand” and ruffing in declarer’s hand is known as a “dummy reversal.”

Dummy plans to pull trump, run clubs, and discard a heart on the king of spades. Norm is ready to play the small spade from dummy and a small one from his hand. Edie continues with the 4 of clubs, leading around to weakness. Sally plays the ace and Walt follows suit. Sally start her plan by drawing trump. She leads the A and K from dummy, and Walt discards a small spade on the second trump.

Sally can still pull all the trump, but it will take all her trumps to do it. That’s still not a problem if the clubs break 3-2. Unfortunately, by the time Sally finds out that they don’t, all her trumps will be gone. She can’t test them, first, by leading a second trump, because if they break 4-1 and the player with the singleton is the player with the remaining trumps, she will lose a trick to a ruff. Her only choice is to hope for the best in clubs.

She continues pulling trump and leads a second club. Edie uncooperatively discards a heart on the second club, and there is no way for dummy to avoid losing a club. What’s worse is that she won’t be able to take any more clubs even after knocking out the Jack. She doesn’t have any more entries to the board. The contract ends up down 3.

Still, for such a disastrous result to happen, the trumps needed to split 4-1 and the clubs needed to split 4-1. Probability favors getting a 3-2 break in at least one of those suits. It was a good plan. It just didn't work out.