8-NT: Plan the Play

We had several interesting hands during a recent 8-NT session. See if you can plan the play on this one. After the hand is nearly passed out several times, you find yourself playing 5C. The 9D is led on your left. What is your plan?

 

Let's count losers first.  We potentially have a diamond loser and two heart losers.  What can we do about them.

If East has the AH, then we can simply lead hearts from dummy and we will get the KH, holding our heart losers to one.  However, given the bidding it seems unlikely that Zeddible has the AH.  After all, Dlrowimfo bid hearts at the four level.  

How about that diamond loser then.  Is there any chance that we'll get a third trick in diamonds?  Unlikely.  Zeddible will almost surely play an honor forcing the AD.  Then as long as they play the other honor any time we play the TD, we can't make a third diamond.  In fact, since Zeddible's preempt probably shows 6 diamonds, we deduce that he has the rest and the west is now void.  So he won't go wrong.

In short, we are unlikely to get rid of a loser by leading the red suits ourselves.

What about that QS?  Is there any chance that we can discard a loser on it?  Yes, actually.  If somebody has  Kxx (or shorter) in spades, we can take the A, ruff two in hand, and then the Q will be good.  That's not a bad plan.

There's a better one though.  Do you see it yet?

We said earlier that we can't get rid of any red suit losers by leading the suits ourselves; what if we can force our opponents to lead them!  If Dlrowdimfo leads hearts, we only have one loser in the suit!  If Zeddible leads diamonds, we will win the TD if he leads low, or the AD if he leads high (establishing the TD).  We eliminate our diamond loser!

So let's plan for this.  We can't just expect Dlrowdimfo and Zeddible to lead poorly.  They are good players and will be on the alert for this trap.  If we let Zeddible win a trick, he will surely lead a heart unless he has none to lead.  We can't lead hearts ourselves to strip them from his hand, so we probably can't endplay Zeddible.

Dlrowdimfo, on the other hand, already has no diamonds, and we will soon draw her trumps.  Her hand will consist of only spades and hearts.  When we let her win a trick (in spades), we must ensure that she either has no more spades, or that she can't lead spades safely.  She won't be able to lead spades if that gives us a ruff/sluff.  In other words, we must have no more spades, and both declarer and dummy must have a trump left.

So here's the plan.  In some order, draw trump, take the AS and ruff two spades.  If the QS is a winner, we are done.  Otherwise, lead the QS from dummy and discard our losing diamond.  Hope that west must win the spade.  Then she will be forced to either give us the KH or give us a ruff/sluff.

What can go wrong?  For one, Zeddible may have the KS.  This is unlikely however.  That would mean he has 6 diamonds and 4 spades.  Many people won't preempt with that distribution.  Furthermore, we will likely discover this distribution along the way, and may be able to fall back on some other approach.

The more pressing problem is transportation.  We need several entries to dummy.  We need 3 actually.  Two to ruff spades, and then one to lead the QS.  Fortunately the trump suit and the KD provide us with entries.  

I chose to draw one trump first, preserving my low trumps in hand for late entries if needed.  When trumps split 0-2 (zeddible had 2), I cashed the AS, and drew the last trump ending in dummy.  I ruffed a spade, used a trump back to dummy and ruffed a spade, with Zeddible discarding.  

Now this is a sure thing.  The only way this could go wrong is if west has 3 diamonds which is impossible with the bidding.  I led a diamond to the KD, and played the QS, discarding my last diamond.

Now west is endplayed.  She can only lead hearts and spades (she actually only had hearts after discarding spades earlier), and either allows me to make the contract.  In practice, she led a low heart, and after a misclick by Zeddible I made 12 tricks.

Here's the full diagram

Always remember the bidding when you play a contract, and think about whether you can force your opponents to help you out by leading suits you can't safely lead.  

(By the way, it's also interesting to think about the play in 4H by dlrowdimfo, if she got to play it there.  The contract makes double dummy).