Thursday 6 January 2011
What are friends for? A card play adventure with a sting in the tail
I believe that Geza Ottlik and Hugh Kelsey’s Adventures in Card Play is the best book on the subject ever written. A friend objected that the book was “too tough – all these positions are very pretty, but none of them ever comes up in actual play”. Shortly after this conversation, today’s deal appeared.
Love all, dealer West:
North-South bid to 4
which East doubled, and with an awkward choice of leads West chose the most awkward for the defence when he began with a diamond – a heart lead would beat the contract two, a spade would beat it one, but a diamond allowed this line of play.
South put in dummy’s 
10, ruffed East’s ace, led a spade to the 
K, threw two losing hearts on dummy’s top diamonds, and led a low heart from the table in this position:
If West wins the 
, the defenders cannot prevent a cross-ruff. So East must put in the J in order to lead three rounds of trumps.
But look what happens to West: he can discard a and the 10, but on the third he is trump-squeezed in three suits.
A discard allows declarer to ruff out the queen; a discard will allow declarer to establish a long and throwing the K will allow declarer to set up a heart trick by means of a ruffing finesse with the queen and eight against East’s ace and seven.
“There you are,” I said .”A three-suit criss-cross ruffing squeeze – these pretty plays do come up at the table.”
“Maybe,” he said, “but instead of leading that heart, declarer could have led a diamond from dummy and thrown the heart loser away.
Then the defenders can’t draw trumps and declarer just cross-ruffs.” He was right, of course. But Adventures in Card Play is still a masterpiece.