Two Red Three's

[inquiry]

Dealer South

Vuln. NS

S 6

H K542

D AJT642

C A2

 

S KT95 S A2

H QT8 H J7

D 975 D Q8

C 63 C KQ9874

 

S QJ8743

H A96

D K

C JT5

 

East west have only 12 cards each. The two red three's are missing. Imagine as north you are playing in a somewhat shaky 3NT contract, and you are not allowed to see the EW hands, althugh you know from the bidding that EAST has longish, good clubs. EAST starts with the CLUB KING. You win the ACE, and know have to decide how to handle the diamond suit. The re-entry situation to North is critical, you have only one. !!

 

Do you play for 3-3 diamonds? (with no distributional information ~35.5% chance, or do you play for doubleton Diamond Queen (16% chance)?

 

Without seeing the cards, a good player will know that the odds are better than 2-1 to play for three-three split. So they might, applying the odds, bang the Diamond ace and continue with the diamond JACK. A great player might look deeper, and realize that 3-3 diamonds might not be enough. This is exactly what Sabine Auken did for Germany in the Venice Cup and what Nick Nickell did for USA1 in the Bermuda Bowl today.

 

To see the problem with playing diamond Ace and a diamond, imagine East with diamond 3 and West with heart 3. Now on the diamond ACE and diamond, East will win and switch to a heart. Now while NS has 9 sure winners (2C, 5D, 2H), he can not establish them all in time. If he wins the heart in dummy and leads a club, the club will become stranded. There is no way to unravel all the winners you need. Kudos to two great plays under terrific pressure.

 

Ben