Ask yourself how can I help partner

[inquiry]

Dealer: West Vul: Both Scoring: MP

♠ QJ973 ♥ J9 ♦ 53 ♣ KJ54 ♠ T864 ♥ T865 ♦ T8 ♣ 983

W N S E 2C -p 2D -P 2H -P 2S -P 2N -P 3N -all pass   T1. D6-D5-DT-DJ T2. CA-C7-C4-C3 T3. CQ-C2-C5-C8 T4. H3-H4-HJ-J6 T5. CK-C9-S2-C6 T6. CJ <--your play

 

Here you hold your usual collection of horrible cards. The good news if for a change you have three tens instead of your usual one. :angry:

 

Partner leads fourth best diamond, and declearer unblocks his doubleton club, enters dummy with the heart jack, and runs clubs. As amazing as it appears, this becomes a "plan your defense hand". Sure, you will never win a trick but you can contribute to the defense. The question is how? Can you find the useful idea?

[luke warm]

the only thing i know to do in such situations is give count in as many suits as possible... i'll throw my diamond and then spades, trying to keep par with west's hearts

[paulhar]

I'm not going to answer this because it's intended for B&I's, but I just love the idea behind it. Many points are lost because people put their partners on the spot instead of helping them. One of the most common situations is when declarer has taken a lot of winners at matchpoints and then led a loser and the defense has the rest of the tricks. You take some winners and are on lead at trick 12. You have a winner and a loser. Probably your partner has two winners, one of which covers your loser. If you lead your winner, partner (if expert) should be able to work out which of his winners to keep, but they often go astray (being human) and throw the wrong one. Then they feel bad about it and mess up the next board too thinking about that one.

 

Don't put your partner in that position. If you're pretty sure declarer doesn't have the winner to cover your loser (he probably would have cashed it if he had it), lead the loser and make your partner's life easier. Partner will happily claim the last two tricks without using an erg of mental energy deciding what to keep and will be fresh for the next hand.

 

IMO, if you cash your winner and partner throws the wrong card, you are partly to blame. I know it's anti-intuitive to lead the loser with a winner in hand. But I've led the loser hundreds of times in this situation and it's never cost a trick. Plus, it keeps my partners playing well, and it's good to have at least one person on the partnership playing well :angry:

[Robertn]

Here's an intermediate thought process ...

 

Declarer has shown probably about 23+hcp semi-balanced. We know he has 2 clubs, and likely has at least 5 hearts. So shape should be 2-5-4-2 or similar. Partner played 4♥. If this is singleton or from 42 doubleton, declarer has 6 or 5 heart tricks and is home. So we have to hope p has A♥ and has held it up, hoping we could win to lead a diamond. If declarer has AK♠ and thought the contract was in danger from diamonds, he'd probably cash spades first. Also, declarer has made no attempt to set up spades while he has entries to dummy, so either doesn't need spade tricks, or more likely has a holding that guarantees an entry like Axx. Giving partner A♥ and K♠ doesn't leave much room for high diamonds, maybe K or Q but not A, and if declarer is 3-5-3-2 partner will be 1-2-6-4 (note that this can be consistent with lead of ♦6. So we may need to avoid telling declarer that partners spade honour is singleton.

 

Now, what tricks does declarer have? 4 clubs, 2-3 diamonds, at least 2 hearts, several spades - can't see how we're going to beat this ... ok it's MPs, let's try and save overtricks. If assumptions so far are correct (though remember they were based on trying to defeat contract) I need to keep all the hearts so that my ten is a stopper. Similarly if p has a spade honour my ten may be a stopper if I keep all spades. What does p need to know about my hand? Well he knows from counting hcp that I have none, and I can't see how showing length will help him (though it may help declarer). So I'll throw 8♦, wait for declarer to finesse spades into p's singleton K and watch p cash AKxxx♦ to punish declarer for being greedy :angry:

 

Robert