Hard to make and hard to beat!

In one 9 board Swiss Pairs match at a tournament last Saturday, there were four slam deals in five successive boards. That sounds exciting. It also does not mean that they were all making slams! What about this one?

What is certain is that South has shown at least 10 cards in the majors, at least 5 cards in each. 3♣︎ was 4th suit forcing, maybe artificial…and 5♠︎? It looks like North wanted good trumps opposite. South said that is what they held.

Such bidding might suggest a void in North’s hand, since they were unwilling to use an ace/ key card ask and perhaps could not get a sensible answer from the response. West might have chosen, therefore, a trump lead but they selected ♣︎10. Bad news for the defence followed. Declarer followed suit to the first round of clubs(won by ♣︎A)  but on the second round, discarded ♦︎10.

At trick 3, declarer called for dummy’s heart. Plan your defence.

Your first thought may be how you wished your partner had led their ace. Yet, as you will see, that was not necessarily the way to successful defence. Never mind, the contract had still to be beaten, if possible. Is going up with your ace the best defence?

You know South has 5 hearts and that they have good spades, probably now 6 of them. If you ducked and declarer’s ♥︎K won the first trick, it would take a lot of ruffing to dislodge your ace. Say, though, declarer did not hold ♥︎Q. If you ducked smoothly, South would almost certainly play ♥︎J holding ♥︎KJ. If you take ♥︎A at one trick, from where was the second trick coming? Trumps? Possibly.

You will be pleased to know that this slam should be beaten whether or not you took your ace. Take a look:

The most certain way to beat this slam is to take ♥︎A and play a third round of clubs. West’s ♠︎J will make a trick sooner or later. However, switching to a trump may appeal and may succeed for the defence. However, if declarer plays for ♥︎Kxx in either defender’s hand, the contract will make.

What then of ducking the first round of hearts? A rather surprised West wins their ♥︎K and has a choice of major suits to play. As long as they lead a trump, there is no way South can succeed. Ducking that first round of hearts would seem to offer more chance of success for East though as you can see, the contract can/ should still be beaten if East does take their ace.

West’s opening lead is tough. Leading the ace of dummy’s first bid, longest suit, feels very risky. Suppose West did start with ♦︎A. What next? With all those minor winners in dummy, the heart switch would be  forlorn desperation! Even that works occasionally! The defence will prevail even if West switches to a club. With no entry to dummy outside trumps, South must play for trumps to be 2-2 and when they are not, will have to concede.   

An initial trump lead will see the diamond loser disappear and the defence would be back to a similar situation as with the club lead…actually worse, since the play of a third round of clubs would not work with West down to just 2 trumps.

There would, or should, be no story about this deal had North used Key Card Blackwood. Firstly, over ♥︎3, they should set spades as trumps with 3♠︎ (3♣︎ must be game-forcing) and then after South’s sign off in 4♠︎, they could use Key Card and discover 2 key cards are missing. Even 5♠︎ is not straightforward. North should never put their partner to slam, even if one of the missing key cards was ♠︎K.

The moral for the defence is that even after a poor start, there may still be hope. Taking that ♥︎A straightaway certainly prevents the overtrick but is it the best way (despite the actual deal) of beating 6♠︎? This is one slam that really should not have made…and it did four times.

Richard Solomon