Deals from Duplicate: #282, Board 11

How duplicate helps you improve your play - Tournament #282, Board 11

by Mixalias

One of the best features of playing duplicate at e-spades is you can review the games later. For me, this feature alone, makes this my preferred site to play spades. The fact that the games are also done in duplicate is only icing on the cake.

Here is a hand that I played recently as East. After the disappointing result of 0% for E/W this hand was posted to the Masterspades spades forum, with a question of what went wrong. The participants where not at all shy about giving their opinions, and you can learn a lot by listening to them. Here is a summary of them.

Id: 282 Board: 11 Hand: 9	A72 1082 K5432 86
KQ965 AKJ75 7 A3		84 Q964 AQ96 Q104
	J103 3 J108 KJ9752

	South	West	North	East
Bids:	1	7	2	Nil
Made:	1	9	2	1

The Play:

1. West leads

3, West Wins.
2. West leads

10,

J, West Wins.
3. West leads

10, West Wins.
4. West leads

8, West Wins.
5. West leads

J, West Wins.
6. West leads

10,

9, North Wins.
7. North leads

7, East Wins.
8. East leads

10,

A, North Wins.
9. North leads

K, West Wins.
10. West leads

3, West Wins.
11. West leads

5, West Wins.
12. West leads

2, West Wins.
13. West leads

K, South Wins.

The controversial play occurred at Trick 7. When West led the 2, East went in with his second-lowest diamond, the 9, and the nil was beaten.

E/W get a low score of 0% instead of 90% they could easily have received.

Dustin starts by saying both West & East messed up:

Trick 6 was where West errored I believe.....by leading the A away from A3 instead of the singleton 7. Interestingly, this move ended up setting East in diamonds instead of clubs. Btw, with AQ96 as the nil hand, East should have known by trick 7 which card to play. Because of West's bid, West had to be almost trump tight! Play low at trick 7.

Steve agrees that East messed up:

There is still a lot of unexplored territory in Spades. I have already written about the card a nil bidder should play from a holding such as J82 when a low card is played from his right. I have recommended the second-highest card should be played.

But one of my theories, not yet published, is that the nil bidder should play his lowest card whenever Pard (the cover hand) bids 6 or more. The idea is that the cover hand has lots of spades and therefore shortness somewhere else. His short suit may be a singleton 2, 3, or 4. In this example it is even easier for an alert nil bidder to find the right play. Partner bid 7 and has shown a 5-card heart suit. Shortness is diamonds and clubs must be presumed.

Brandon also agrees that East messed up:

It was late in the hand, thus Spades would soon be broken, and possibly all that was left in Covers hand. If it was the first card play, I would have played the higher card, but this was the 7th. If nil survives the 5th round, pard had 5 Spades, and the nil is safe.

The 2nd highest in this case (9) was pretty high, considering that the nil hand had 2 cards even higher.

Overall, I learnt a lot from these and other fine comments, I don't have room to repeat here. On subsequent games at duplicate, I was able to learn from my mistake and avoid having my nil being set.

There was also some fascinating comments by Ruffkid that West could have let East know what kind of had he had by either leading the K then the A or reversing them (A then K) to show what kind of hand he has (long spades or good spades and good side suits). This is well worth exploring in the future.

Other comments explored the fact that West, having a singleton diamond, does best to lead it early, so as to alert East not to play 2nd hand high on diamonds. Another fine suggestion.

I highly recommend duplicate and then taking time to review your play, this will significantly improve your play. Where you don't know how you could have done better, you can also post your hand and get some very instructive comments (if slightly harsh, lol).

Please mail comments to: mailto:mixalias@yahoo.com?subject=amit3.htm.

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