jillybean Posted March 27, 2006 Report Share Posted March 27, 2006 Hi, Here are the lesson notes and hands from the Inferences and visualization II. lesson Cor Balfoort and Pedro Malafaya held. I will also email these notes out as a word doucment and include the LIN files so that you can easily replay the hands and practice the skills discussed here. If you would like to be added to the email list please send a message to bbolesson(at)hotmail(dot)com ============================================ Inferences and visualization II Cor Balfoort and Pedro Malafaya Good evening / afternoon / morning everyone, and welcome to this second lecture by Pedro Malafaya and myself, also the second one on the important subject of ‘inferences and visualization’. Thanks again as well to Jillybean and Rolfy, who took the initiative for these lectures and convinced us we’d be good enough to do these lectures for you. I hope we will not disappoint your expectations. Since many BBO-users are in different time-zones and many of those people asked us if it would be somehow possible to reproduce this lecture at a time more convenient to them, we have prepared most of our text, so it can be posted on the BBO Forum afterwards. Furthermore this chat session will be logged, so it can be made available to these users at a later time. Tonight’s moderators will be Pedro (malafaya) and Nurit (nurit333): if you have any remarks, answers or questions, please address to them in PRIVATE MESSAGES, so we will not all have our whole screen filled with all sorts of comments. Pedro and Nurit will take care to get the comments to me, or will later ask you to post your remark in public chat so we can use it in our lecture. Thanks for your cooperation in this. And now we can start! This lecture will take an estimated 1 hour and a half. The difference between expert players and ‘lesser’ players is often described as the expert playing with 52 cards while the lesser player uses 26 only. As the play of a hand develops, the expert will constantly be looking for inferences: from the bidding, from the way the defence is proceeding, and from the distribution of opponents’ hands as they are revealed during the play of a hand. Sometimes it doesn’t matter, but quite often it will: the capacity of the expert to ‘visualize’ the hands of his opponents and keep count of the honor cards they possess will often lead him to the winning line of play, that will be either be missed or become a guess when not doing this. As Pedro showed in last week’s lecture, it is possible to make quite a few useful inferences from one or two of your opponents bidding. An opponent having bid can give you important clues as to the position of vital cards, and you can often plan your winning line of play accordingly. The reverse is however equally true: opponents NOT having bid can also provide you with important inferences. To warm up a little, let’s look at the following hand that should not be too hard to work out: Brd 1 K973North T74None Q3 AJ85 AQJT5 96 AJ9 KT7 W N E S================ P P P 1S P 3S P 4S P P P After three passes you open 1!S in 4th seat, after which you reach the contract of 4!S without opponents interfering. West leads the K and A of hearts, followed by a small heart. East plays the !HJ after having petered. Time to make a plan. Take your time. I assume you have come up with the following line to start with: you ruff East’s J and draw trumps ending in dummy. Then you continue with the Q of diamonds. So far, so good. The finesse loses to West’s !DK and West returns another diamond. You have lost three tricks now, so your contract depends on finding the Q of clubs. With AJxx in dummy and KTx in hand you however have a CHOICE: you can take the finesse over either East or West. Is this a 50% guess? Think carefully. Have you come up with the correct answer? Indeed…this is NOT a 50% guess. A little point counting combined with an analysis of the bidding and play will lead you to the near 100% line of play: West already showed up with the AK of hearts as well as with the K of diamonds. That makes 10 points. East petered on the hearts and played the !J on the 3rd round. This means he had !HQJxx(x). If West would be looking at the !CQ as well (or at the !HQ, for that matter), his total would add up to 12 points. But….West PASSED in first seat, which he would very likely not have done with 12 points. If West had been looking at a 12 count, he would have OPENED the bidding. Brd 1 K973North T74None Q3 AJ85 North42 86AK53 QJ82KT42 8765432 Q96West East AQJT5 96 AJ9 KT7 South So, this means that you will go look for the club Q in EAST’S hand, this time using the information of SILENT opponents to your advantage. A little counting and reasoning has here improved your chances from a mere 50% to a near certain 100%. Sometimes it is counting POINTS that will lead you to the winning line, sometimes it’s counting CARDS. Here’s an example: Brd 8 862West 9743None K62 A64 North KQ75 KQJ A9 KQT7 South EW play a 5 card major system, West opens 1!S and both North and East pass. You bid 2NT, which in your system shows 18-20 in drop dead seat and partner raises you to 3NT. W N E S================ 1S P P 2NT P 3NT P P P West leads the !SJ, you play small from dummy and see East play the 3. It’s time to make the first few inferences. Take your time and plan your line of play. These are the first things you should deduct from the bidding: knowing West opened a 5 card suit, combined with your holding !SKQxx and dummy’s three pips makes East’s !S3 a 100% certain singleton. West has furthermore led his 2nd best from an interior sequence of AJT9x. And East not having any spades left means there is no reason to hold up, so you take the lead with the Q and assess your prospects. You are in a good contract. True, you are not going to make more than 1 trick in spades unless West is a very friendly opponent, which you should assume him not to be if you’re playing an expert game. But even when not counting on West’s friendliness, there’s a certain two tricks in hearts, which totals your prospects to 8 tricks. There are furthermore pretty good chances to land your 9th trick: hearts or clubs could split 3-3, plus you could find the !HT or the !CJ dropping doubleton, either of which will total your tricks to the much desired nine. You attack hearts first, playing the K. West and East both playing small. You continue with the !HQ and West takes the A, East finishing a peter to show an even number. West then exits with a heart, on which East shows out. More information reveals as the play develops: you already knew West had five spades to the AJT, now you also know he held four hearts to the AT. How do you continue? With West holding a certain nine cards in the majors, you conclude it’s odds on that East will hold the length in clubs. So, a not unreasonable line would be to now play out the K of clubs, followed by a small club to the A and a club back. Not having seen Jx appear, you then play the !CT, finessing against East’s presumed J. You’d be home now if West would have !CJx or East would have Jxxx, and you’d also be home if East had Jxx, sine his J would then appear at the 3rd round of clubs. These are actually good odds, BUT… There is actually NO need at ALL to submit yourself to any guess or calculation with respect to the club suit. You have a 100% way to land your contract. Do you see how? With nine cards in the West hand already known, the bidding and the play of the hand so far have already provided you with the winning inference: all you have to do now is table your !DA and continue with a !D to your K in dummy. And while you do that, you keep COUNT of West’s hand, knowing he has only FOUR cards in both minor suits. A little arithmetic will then do the rest: if West shows out on the second round of diamonds, his hand pattern is 5-4-1-3, meaning clubs are splitting 3-3 after all. This is a vital clue, since this will spare you the indignity of losing your contract with !CJxx in West. And if West follows to the second diamond, he CANNOT have more than 2 clubs, after which you play a club to the K in hand, a club back to the A to counter Jx. And if West follows small, you confidently hook East’s Jxxx when playing the third round of clubs. Brd 1 862North 9743None K62 A64 NorthAJT43 9AT82 653 QJT8754J85 932West East KQ75 KQJ A9 KQT7 South This technique is known as a ‘show up’: you use the known distributions in other suits to find out for certain how a critical suit is divided. This time, inferences from bidding and subsequent information that became available during the play enabled you this ‘show up’. Sometimes, you will be FORCED to make a certain inference in order to make your contract. Quite often, this happens when you have landed in a contract that is a bit high. To illustrate this, we move into the slam-regions again: Brd 1 2North AKQ63None KQ7 KJ64 A74 J9874 83 A97 South West opens the bidding with 3!S and after an info-double by partner you bid 4!H. Partner pushes on with a 4!S cuebid and after hearing you reluctantly cuebid !C’s he propels you into a somewhat ambitious 6!H. W N E S================ 3S X P 4H P 4S P 5C P 6H P P P West leads the K of spades, which you take with the A. Time to make a plan. Take your time. You will likely continue by drawing trumps in two rounds, ending in hand. If you have done that, you will have discovered that West had two hearts and East one. Since the !DA in West will give you a discard for your club loser, you are going to play diamonds first. With little hope, but it’s a chance you have to take. Sadly but not surprisingly it’s East who turns up with the !DA, and he returns the !DJ, West following suit. Time to plan again, based on the play so far. The less experienced player would now maybe play a club to the A and a club back to the J, hoping it is West who holds the Q. The expert will however first try and find out as MUCH as he possibly can about his opponents’ hands before he makes his decision on how to tackle the club suit. So, playing like the above mentioned expert, you continue by ruffing the third diamond in hand, to which all follow. Then you ruff a spade, HIGH to preserve an entry in your hand and noting East following suit. You then return to hand with a trump and ruff your last spade. This time East shows out and discards a diamond. And now it’s time to take stock. Did you use the information that became available to you? This is not an easy hand, so think carefully. West has seven spades, 100% sure since East showed out when you ruffed the 3rd spade in dummy. West followed to two rounds of trumps. West also followed to three rounds of diamonds. He may have had four: that you were unable to find out. Is that important? Yes! It’s actually of vital importance, but in a more complicated way. Try and follow this reasoning in three stages: Prospects are admittedly very poor. West already showed up with seven spades, two trumps and three diamonds, so he cannot have long clubs as well. It seems very much that West’s preemptive opening and partner’s enthusiasm have driven you too high. But before you surrender to one down and a very bad score, you should try and visualize if there is actually ANY West hand imaginable that would still allow you to land your slam. You’re now playing with the big guys and girls, which means that you may occasionally land in very sharp contracts, much like you have now. Playing with an expert partner however also means that he is never going to blame you for going down in a contract you cannot possibly make. But he WILL be disappointed in you if you’d go down in a contract without actually having taken your last final and tiny chances. And since this slam is looking almost hopeless, it’s those tiny chances you’ll have to go looking for meanwhile. So, here we go, using the inferences the bidding and play have given you so far: West’s hand pattern is either 7-2-4-0 or 7-4-3-1. 1. If West would have FOUR diamonds, that would make his hand pattern 7!S-2!H-4!D, making him VOID in clubs. 2. As a consequence of that, East would then be looking at QTxxxx in clubs, and with that club holding in East you are NEVER going to make your contract. So, since you should take even your slightest chance to land your contract, you should now ASSUME that West had only three diamonds. Why? 3. Because West holding just three diamonds would then leave room for just ONE club, and even with just a singleton club in West there are two tiny chances to land your slam. Did you see them? West’s singleton club MUST be either the Q or the T: EVERY other distribution of cards will doom your slam. And so, you MUST proceed by hanging on to that last tiny chance. DON’T EVER GIVE UP until you’re down and must conclude your contract can well and truly never be made. And here you have found your last ray of hope. The way to reach your conclusion was pretty complicated, but the consequences are easy. In fact, life has suddenly become very simple: There is NO other way to make your ambitious contract than sticking to that FORCED assumption of West needing to have had three diamonds and either possessing the stiff !CT or !CQ. So, consequently - after having ruffed your last spade in dummy - you table the K of clubs in dummy and cross your fingers. Brd 1 2North AKQ63None KQ7 KJ64 NorthKQJT863 9552 T542 AJT96T Q8532West East A74 J9874 83 A97 South Much to your joy and relief, West drops the !CT under your K, after which you confidently continue with a small club, inserting the 9 with the proper degree of confidence and already awaiting the “VWD!!” from your partner. Another type of inference is the so called negative inference. To illustrate this, let’s look at the following defensive play by your opponents: Brd 8 J42West J4None A75 KQ954 North AKT63 KQT87 K2 2 South W N E S================ 1S P 2C P 2H P 2S P 3H P 4S P P P You’ve landed in a nice contract of 4!S, but West is out to spoil your day when he leads a small heart to his partner’s A and ruffs the heart return. West continues with a club, you play the K from dummy and East takes the A. Fearing the worst, you wait for another heart return, but East makes a poker face and returns the club J. You sigh with relief: all you need now is to find the Q of trumps… So, plan your play, or basically: are you going to finesse or are you going to play for the drop? You try and calculate your odds. How does West already having ruffed once improve your chances to play for the drop? They have surely improved, in fact quite a lot. But….is that important? NO, it’s completely TRIVIAL, in fact. Why? You should reason like this: Playing in an expert game, you can be confident that EW are out to beat your contract. Furthermore you can assume East to be good enough to return another heart if that return would beat your contract. But he DIDN’T return a heart, and that should make you think. In fact it should make you very suspicious. Your thinking should basically result in this: that you can bet your pay check of this month that East would not have hesitated for a split second to return another heart if he would NOT be looking at the Q of trumps HIMSELF. East’s play of a club was not an expression of chivalry, nor in any other way intended to allow you to make a contract that was doomed after that heart lead. Seeing no more hearts in dummy, East’s knew that West would be unable to ruff the next heart high in front of dummy’s trump J. And West’s inability to do so would thus expose the position of the trump Q in East’s hand with a painful certainty. But, if you think and reason correctly, East’s play in the 4th trick reveals the position of the trump Q JUST as clearly as his returning another heart would have. Brd 11 J42South J4None A73 KQ954 North98 Q752 A9653JT962 Q84T8763 AJWest East AKT63 KQT87 K5 2 South You have to think of it, but once you do, the world suddenly looks ever so bright: you take the club return in dummy, play a small spade to A or K, then cross to dummy and play a small spade back, finessing with confidence when East plays small and smiling when you see West show out. This time, it´s a tactical inference that leads you to the winning line. By TRUSTING your opponents to do the obvious if that would lead to one off, you use their refusal to do so to reach a conclusion as to your winning line of play. Another instructive example of visualization is demonstrated in the next hand. It appeared in a big pairs tournament, and some post mortem analysis of who obtained which score on the board revealed that the contract was made by the elementary AND by the strongest players in the field, with a large group of intermediate and advanced players going down. Now, that should make you curious: Brd 11 K986South K6None A832 T72 North AJ742 AQ7 K75 54 South W N E S================ 1S 2C 3C P 4S P P P North’s bid of 3!C showed a good raise to 3!S, enabling him to bid 3!S as a preemptive bid. West leads off with three top clubs, East showing out on the 3rd round and you ruffing. You have already lost two tricks and are looking at a solid !D loser next to a possible trump loser. Time to make your plan. Confronted with the problem of how to tackle the trump suit, the elementary players followed the ‘ole rule of ‘eight ever, nine never’, banged down the K and A and were rewarded by dropping the Q doubleton offside. Since you now know most of the opponents’ hands, we will show these as well: Brd 11 K986South K6None A832 T72 NorthQ5 T3984 JT532T4 QJ96AKQJ96 83West East AJ742 AQ7 K75 54 South The intermediate and advanced players knew a little about the theory of vacant places and did a little arithmetic: with West having shown six clubs and East only two, the odds of East holding Qxx in trumps had actually increased a lot, since West’s 6 known clubs left him with only 7 vacant places in his hand, whereas East had 11. Consequently, they played a small spade to dummy and finessed over East on the way back, and that was one off. How did the experts proceed then? As was said earlier, an expert will try to postpone a critical decision for as long as he can in order to find out all he possibly can about the distribution of the opponents’ hands. So, experts proceeded to cash three heart tricks first, judging the chances of a heart being ruffed early to be small. Furthermore, it would not help West to ruff a possible 3rd heart in front of dummy. They saw both East and West follow suit three times. Then they they tabled the !DK and played a small diamond to dummy. Note that it´s VITAL to take your best chance of avoiding any of your !D HONORS being ruffed by West - who is most likely to be short in that suit – by playing out the K from hand first and then continue with a small to your 2nd !D-honor. If West would have been able to ruff this 2nd round of diamonds, he would not only be ruffing declarer’s !D loser (declarer playing small from dummy), but furthermore, West’s ruffing would enable declarer to solve his problem in trumps by means of a little expert visualizaton: West ruffing the 2nd diamond will show he has 1+?!S-3!H-1!D-6!C for certain, which means he can NOT hold more than three spades. So, with West already having ruffed once, declarer can proceed by cashing the K from dummy to find out if West had a singleton trump and subsequently play for either the drop or the finesse with a certainty: based on the information now available, West holding three trumps would now be exposed by East showing out in the second round, which means declarer can now drop West’s Q that is meanwhile doubleton. West’s singleton trump would be discovered by playing the K too, and expose East to the certain finesse. And if West and East would both follow suit on the trump K, the trump Q is certain to appear in East on the second round if trumps were split 2-2. But nothing of this happened and all went quietly when West followed to a second round of diamonds. After this bit of discovery, our expert declarers had managed to figure out that West held 6 clubs, at least 3 hearts and at least 2 diamonds. This meanwhile meant that West could have no more than TWO spades. So, after a diamond to the A in dummy, they now tabled the K of trumps and played a small trump back to hand, inserting the J when East played low. Of course, this also lost to the Qx. So, down one you would say? NO! Did you spot why not? If you did not, your visualization is in for improvement. West turning up with Qx of trumps now makes his hand pattern a 100% CERTAIN 2-3-2-6. AND since three rounds of hearts and two rounds of diamonds had already been played, West was now stripped off ALL his EXIT CARDS. This is West’s hand when declarer plays the J of trumps: Brd 11 98South None 8 NorthQ J96 West AJ7 5 South Thus, West was subsequently FORCED to return the only suit he had left: clubs. And this enabled declarer to ruff in dummy and discard his !D loser from hand, making his ‘solid’ loser in that suit vanish in thin air… Note how this (in this case losing) finesse effectively makes this contract 100%: if the !SJ holds, declarer is home and only gives up a diamond. And if it loses, West is forced to give declarer a ruff and discard. Careful counting and visualization again landed a precious game contract. Note that it is also possible to play a !D to the A and then exit in diamonds. If diamonds would split 3-3 or West would win with every split of the diamonds you’d also be home now. But if East would win the 3rd !D with West showing out, the return of the 4th !D by East may get you into trouble if West ruffs this with the T, forcing you to overruff without knowing what remaining singleton trump to play for on the way back to hand. ## Enterprising players often make a habit of entering the bidding on fairly weak hands. This may occasionally land you in contracts no one else reaches, but in all cases in which you eventually lose the bidding and see your opponents declare, you should be well aware of being behind your competitors, since you have given declarer valuable clues from your bidding. To illustrate this, let’s have a look at this hand first, on which South became declarer in 6!H after an UNdisturbed bidding. South KQT3None K A65 North K6 AJ542 763 KQJ South W N E S================ 1H P 1S P 1NT P 2C P 2NT P 3H P 3S P 4C P 4H P 6H P P PNorth’s 2!C was checkback and 2NT by South showed a maximum, after which 3!H by North was forcing and showed interest in slam. South duly cuebid his !SK, North showed a !C-control and went for the slam after South denied a !D-control. West led a 2nd best 9 of clubs. Take your time and make your plan. Seeking to land their slam by way of two !D ruffs in dummy, quite a few declarers took the lead in dummy and instantly played the K of diamonds to make their ruffs first. West took the !DA and continued clubs, taken in declarer’s hand, who continued according to plan and ruffed a diamond in dummy. Not wishing to run into a possible club ruff and declining to play trumps before the !D-ruffs had been made, declarers came back to hand with a spade to the K, then ruffed their 3rd diamond and continued to cash the remaining two trumps in dummy. It was surprising maybe to see the trumps being divided 4-0 in East, which now made it impossible to overtake the 2nd trump in dummy: since declarer had used the T to ruff a diamond, overtaking the 2nd high trump would promote the 9876 in East’s hand. So, declarers continued to return to hand by way of cashing the !SA and ruff a spade. To their horror, East ruffed the !SA and that was curtains. It’s true that even one early round of trumps could have warned declarer of possible more bad splits, but this line of play does not seem unreasonable at all. There were also declarers who played a round of trumps first, discovered the bad break and subsequently went for dummy reversal lines and tried to ruff the !S suit good, which made them run into an early spade ruff as well. South KQT3None K A65 NorthQT843 2 9876AQJ5 T9842T987 432West East K6 AJ542 763 KQJ South In our special example case, declarer is also faced with bringing home this 6!H, but this time, we had an enterprising West overcalling 1!S over South’s 1!H opening. North could have gone for a trap pass, but NS being vulnerable vz. not made him decide to go for the big score of a vulnerable slam after South showed a non-minimum hand over North’s 2!S-bid. W N E S================ 1H 1S 2S P 4H P 6H P P P This West led his 4th best !S, small in dummy, !S2 in East and declarer declined to win this trick cheaply with the 6 and in stead won with the K to preserve a finesse position in the suit. He continued by playing a small trump to the K in dummy, finding the trumps to be 4-0 and with West discarding a club. This rather ruined his plans, but mind you that THIS declarer could already afford to ruff only ONE diamond in dummy, since the bidding at this table and the !S lead from West’s 5 card made it 100% certain that the !S finesse would provide a discard for his 2nd diamond. This meant that he could cope with a 3-1 split in trumps, which would leave one trump in dummy to take care of the other diamond loser. It was also the reason he played that round of trumps first. The 4-0 split combined with the !S lead presented problems however. Since West would surely have the !DA to be overcalling with such a weak hand, declarer was unable to drive out the !DA before having drawn all East’s trumps, since a second spade from West would most certainly run him into a ruff. Seeking a more cunning way to land his contract, this declarer continued with four rounds of trumps, ending in hand. After a club discard on the 1st round, West discarded another three clubs on the next three rounds of trump. Seeking to find more information, declarer now continued with three rounds of clubs, ending in hand. West took more and more time to consider his discards. He discarded a small diamond on the 1st round of clubs, then discarded the diamond J and a spade on the next two rounds, East following to three rounds of clubs. Declarer was meanwhile building a mental picture of West’s hand: five spades to the QT, no hearts and four clubs to the ten. NOT more than four, since East followed to the club suit three times as well. West’s hand pattern was now an open book: he was 5-0-4-4. And what did West have left after all this discarding? He had led a spade and discarded one on a round of clubs, which leaves QT8. He already discarded all his clubs on the trumps, plus two diamonds. This means that the hand West has NOW left looks as follows: QT8-Ax- West’s second diamond will likely be the Q, but that is completely irrelevant. Declarer sees a very pretty ending coming up. Do you see it as well? With a clear visualization of West’s hand in mind, declarer now played out his 5th and last trump, further turning the screws on West. After another long pause, West elected to discard his !DQ, but this was to no avail. On the last trump declarer discarded a small spade from dummy and he continued now by playing a small !S to dummy, inserting the 9 when West played the 8. Then came the !DK, and after West having discarded the !DQ this was now certain to be captured by West’s meanwhile BARE !DA. This left West on lead with QT of spades in front of dummy’s AJ, and thus he was forced to present declarer with a second spade finesse: one South could never have taken himself and furthermore the finesse that South needed to land his slam. If West would have elected to discard a spade in stead of the !DQ, declarer would have discarded the !DK from dummy and finesse the spades to set up the suit, as West’s remaining QT could now no longer stop the spades in dummy from becoming all good. Thus, West was squeezed out of one of his tricks in a way that was presented to declarer by the information and inferences having become available by West’s bidding. Declarer took a VERY unusual line of play, one he would likely NEVER have taken if West had not overcalled. Again, we see how inferences from the bidding can help you find even a very unusual line of play, forced as you were by the specific circumstances of an unusually bad trump break. At that, advanced visualization was required to actually picture West’s hand as well as his problem in discarding, and subsequently use that to your advantage. Inferences and visualization also play a key role in the following example. Brd 11 South None A64 K8 AK6 AJ753 South Your 19 count with a 5 card is pretty close to a 2NT opener, but the weak spots in your long suit make you decide to open 1!C and later rebid your strength. West overcalls a vulnerable 1!D and a partner you never played with before bids 1!H in North. Afraid that North might now leave you in 2NT if you bid that, you decide to not make the textbook bid. You jump to 3NT right away, judging your hand good enough for that and trusting that partner – who passed in 1st seat and did not open a weak two in !H’s - will leave you there. W N E S================ P P 1C 1D 1H P 3NT P P P P In fact he does, and West leads the !DQ. Brd 11 K8South Q7642None 743 T98 North A64 K8 AK6 AJ753 South Taking a look at the dreadful dummy partner tabled, you conclude that things are not very rosy. Your partner voluntarily calling 1!H is somewhat dubious with his feeble 5 count, but before you start criticizing his bidding, you first concentrate on your chances to bring in this 3NT. It is obvious that tricks will have to come from the club suit. It is equally obvious that if West holds BOTH club honors, you are dead meat. West has gained a tempo by leading his QJ-something of diamonds, and two club entries will be quite enough for him to set up enough tricks for the defence to make you regret your 3NT bid. True, you do have a chance if West would be looking at exactly the BARE KQ of clubs, but there is a much better chance in this suit: split honors, which offer you a decent a priori 75% chance to be well on your way to land your contract. BUT… Suppose that you succeed in bringing in the clubs at the loss of only one trick, this will still not be enough: 4!C, 2!D and the !SA and K make only eight tricks. So, there’s one more trick to find. Furthermore, you will need a second entry in dummy to enable you to finesse twice in clubs. Note that the double finesse in clubs is by far superior to finessing and subsequently playing for the drop on the 2nd round: the former play will only win if East holds Hx (H being either the K or the Q) in that suit while the double finesse will also win with Hxx or Hxxx in East. It’s not too hard to see that you will both need to develop that 9th trick and find that second entry to dummy in the heart suit. There is however a DANGER you are facing. And it’s pretty serious. Suppose you follow the common rule of playing honor cards from the short hand first and table the !HK to create an entry to dummy and set up a trick in that suit. Since West is by far most likely to hold that !HA, surrendering the lead to him this way will give him the chance to set up his diamonds before you have even begun to set up your clubs. And since West will be looking at one of the two club honors with near certainty to account for his vulnerable overcall, this means that your contract will be doomed even with split club honors. Is there no way at all then to bring this 3NT in then? Think very carefully. Yes, there actually is. It’s not that big a chance, but since you both bid rather enterprisingly, it’s the small chances you will have to look for. Did you see the solution? There’s only ONE correct card to play at trick two…and that is the !H8! To see why, look at the full lay out: North Q7642None 743 T98 NorthQT8 J9532AJ9 T53QJT85 92K6 Q42West East A64 K8 AK6 AJ753 South As you assumed and are now able to see, West indeed has the !HA. But if he’d decide to now hop up with it in order to not lose any tempo to get his diamond suit running, the !HA hitting thin air combined with the actual 3-3 split in hearts will now suddenly give you FOUR heart tricks. True, your heart suit is blocked, but with two top tricks in !S’s, you will be able to unblock the suit without a problem. And with 4!H’s, 2!D’s and 2!S’s plus your !CA you will then have your nine tricks without the necessity of having to set up more than one club trick. A good West looking at !HAJx in his own hand should be able to figure this out as well and therefore he will likely not hop up with his !HA. But now, something REALLY GOOD has happened: not only have you managed to make a much needed heart trick, you have also won that trick WITHOUT losing the lead. Effectively, you have gained back a crucial tempo AND you have just created that second entry to dummy needed to finesse twice in clubs. So, you continue with a club, which is won by West’s K. Of course he returns the !DJ, but it’s too late now. You take with your !DA, play a spade to dummy’s K and proceed according to plan, putting your money on the club honors being split. Much to your relief the second finesse is on, which makes you run home with 2!S, 1!H, 2!D and 4!C tricks. Again, we see declarer draw INFERENCES from West having entered the bidding: his vulnerable overcall virtually forced you to assume that he would be holding the !HA. In order to have ANY chance at all to make your 3NT, you also had to ASSUME split club honors. It’s no use worrying about losing lay-outs: you quite simply assume the lay-out you need to bring in your contract and act accordingly. Here, split club honors offered your best chance by far. And finally, you took the EXTRA chance of a 3-3 heart split and combined it with assessing the position of the !HA, which brought you to that cunning move of STEALING a heart trick in a way that left the defence effectively unable to beat you in any way: neither hopping up with the !HA nor ducking it left West any chance. A very difficult but also very instructive hand. Sometimes, desperate measures are needed to beat a contract. Sometimes they result in giving away overtricks that you maybe had not expected in an expert game. But experts care little about overtricks as long as they are certain they have taken every possible chance to beat your contract. Sometimes, however, the desperation play of expert players leads to spectacular results. Expert players making the newspaper bridge columns nearly always bring this off by their ability to visualize the non-visible hands. To conclude tonight’s lecture, let’s illustrate this with an absolutely stellar example of defence, in which visualization and inferences play a key role. Mind you, this is NOT a pre-constructed hand. The following play in defence was actually pulled off in a team’s tournament by two legendary Italian players: Benito Garozzo and Pietro Forquet. Watch how these two star players manage to make declarer’s life utterly miserable and keep in mind that while we see all four hands, these two defenders were ONLY able to see dummy and use the information provided by the bidding and the play! Ready for some dynamite defending? Here we go! North 4None QT9874 6542 North732 JT84AJ6532 T98K6 J32Q9 JT8West East KQ96 KQ7 A5 AK73 South South opens a 20-22 2NT and North raises to 3NT. West – Pietro Forquet - led a small !H, which ran to the 8 in East and declarer’s Q. In a team game of normal mortals, declarer tables the !DA, crosses his fingers when he plays a subsequent small diamond and sighs with relief when he sees West win the trick. No return can harm him now and he will end up with 11 tricks for a push. Playing against Garozzo-Forquet is however a different matter. It may surprise you, but at this moment, Forquet had already figured out how the rest of the heart suit was divided. South taking East’s 8 with the Q could only indicate that his partner had T98 and declarer had KQ7. This meant that if East would be able to gain the lead just once, the defence would be able to bring in the heart suit and beat the contract. However, with declarer having a 20-22 count, dummy holding 6 points and Forquet himself looking at another 10, he could easily deduce that his partner was very unlikely to hold more than a couple of jacks. So, prospects seemed poor when declarer continued at trick two with the !DA. Forquet could now see that if declarer would have AJ of diamonds, this contract was never going to be beaten, since Forquet would be forced to win the second round of diamonds and thereby set up dummy’s long suit with the !SA as a rock solid entry. So, Forquet dumped his !DKING under declarer’s A! As you can see when looking at all four hands, this had the devastating effect of now suddenly creating an entry into the EAST hand: effectively this unblocking now left declarer unable to set up the diamond suit without surrendering the lead to East. To take his chance in case Garozzo in the East seat would have Jx in diamonds, declarer proceeded with a !D to dummy. He saw both defenders play small, which meant curtains for his plan to bring in the diamonds! Declarer however had another string on his bow. With 4 spades, 1 heart and 2 diamond tricks now certain, 3 club tricks would suffice to land his contract after all. BUT, in setting up a 3rd trick in that suit, he would have to give up a club trick to WEST, the hand that could not harm him. As you can see, declarer can succeed if he would play a club from dummy and East would play small. With the 8 actually being the LOWEST of the outstanding cards, declarer would play small from hand and thereby make West win the club trick perforce. Note that declarer was fully appreciating these opponents’ skill in defending: at the play of a top honor in clubs from hand, he knew Forquet would no doubt unblock any club honor he would be looking at. So, declarer went for a so called avoidance play, attempting to duck a trick into the West hand if possible. So, in dummy with the !DQ, South went for plan #2 and played a small club from dummy. But now it was Garozzo who was wide awake: he played the T from his JT8! Why did he do that? In order to find out what a world class player is capable of visualizing, let’s go through Garozzo’s reasoning. His partner unblocking his !DK could not but mean that Forquet was desperate to try and find an entry to Garozzo’s hand. Apparently, Forquet expected the contract to be beaten if East could gain the lead only once. Garozzo deduced that Forquet must then be holding AJxxx(x) in hearts, the only holding good enough to make this defence logical. Note that FIVE hearts to the AJ are good enough only if West has the !H7. Declarer holding !HKQ7x would enable him to block the suit by playing HIGH on the heart return, promoting his !H7 if West would attempt to cash, thereby dropping East’s !H9. This information was enough for Garozzo to form himself a complete picture of declarer’s hand. Declarer turning to playing clubs now had to mean he was looking for a 3rd trick in that suit, which must also mean he already had eight. That gives declarer KQx(x) in spades, the known KQx in hearts as well as the Ax in diamonds, leaving 4 or 5 clubs in the South hand that had to be A and either K or Q to account for a 2NT opening. South could have 20 points with AQxx(x) in clubs, but that meant that Forquet would have the !CK and then declarer would only be able to make his contract if he would either first duck out to West’s stiff K or surrender the lead to West’s Kx by playing a highly dangerous !CA followed by a small !C. With AKxxx in clubs, South would necessarily possess AK9xx and Forquet the stiff Q, presenting declarer with the winning option of finessing the second round of clubs or see East play the J and win his contract. So, in order to beat this 3NT, Garozzo ASSUMED declarer to hold AKxx, without the 9 and that meant Forquet would have !CQ9. Consequently, Garozzo went up with the T, forcing declarer to win the trick and trusting his partner to know what to do…which he did: Forquet duly cooperated by dumping his !CQ under declarer’s K! Declarer then returned to dummy with a spade and once again led a small club from dummy, intending once more to duck this if East would play the 8. Once again, however, Garozzo went up high, playing the !CJ. Again, he could not be certain that his partner would hold the !C9, but this 3NT would not be beaten if Forquet would not have this card. Garozzo’s J forced declarer once again to win with a top honor and Forquet happily unblocked the assumed and very welcomed !C9. Now the hand was OVER! Declarer could have settled for one down now by cashing out his top tricks. He however took a last small chance to land his contract, namely !CJT in East and Q98 in West, in which case West would be forced to win the third club after all to make declarer able to make his contract. So, he played his 3rd club and turned pale when he saw West show out. To his horror, it was East who gained the lead with the !C8. Garozzo won, calmly cashed his !DJ and then played a heart, setting the contract by a depressing THREE tricks. There’s a decent chance you may never in your life pull off a defence like this. At the same time, this hand also shows you that ‘unbeatable’ contracts might not be as unbeatable as they seem at first sight! And this forms the main attraction of teams, where overtricks can be sacrificed if they give you a small chance to beat a contract. As you were able to see here, the investment of a possible 1 imp overtrick led to the setting of the contract by three tricks, not only because of the unblocking itself, but most importantly also because of the MESSAGE it relayed to partner. Forquet unblocking his !DK HELPED Garozzo to find the winning defence in his playing of the club suit, making the 1 imp gambit pay off with a 14 imp gain against the +660 their team mates were likely to bring in when facing a less brilliant defence. Obviously, an unexpected play of a high card should not be made at every possible occasion, since that is most likely to both annoy your partner and throw away imps. But a well reasoned unblocking that MIGHT present the defence with a tiny chance to beat a contract will always be appreciated by an expert partner. He will be capable to visualize what you were after, and whether it worked or not, he will appreciate the way you managed to try and see through the cards, which is what visualization is all about. And this concludes tonight’s lecture, as well as the subject of inferences and visualization. I hope you enjoyed. Thank you for your attention! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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