"Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you'll duck soup the rest of your life."

This was a comment Groucho Marx made regarding the title of a 1933 film release Duck Soup. This article is not about dictatorship and government as the movie depicted nor is it about soup of any kind. It is however about ducking a winner while playing spades.

I like the comment Groucho made about the ingredients in Duck Soup so I stole his phrase. In our little, niche, however we might have one chimp, two resident self-proclaimed experts, and a mighty duck!

I think most are familiar with ducking an Ace in second hand position but I am going to list it for reference anyway.

A small club is led by East and you, South, must play next holding A87. If you play the A you are likely to collect three small cards unless we are in some bagging war, but I am not concerned with discussing bagging theory in this article. Today we are talking about taking all the tricks you can get!

Second Hand Low

If South ducks the A all kinds of options exist. Your partner may have the QJ10 and if East was leading from his K it will never take a trick. It is also possible that West may have the King and not play it. All too often we lose valuable tricks by not ducking and I feel many players who reference this site already know this. Second-hand-low play is nothing new. It has been around since the days of Whist and I do not intend to write a novel today regarding second-hand-low play. I do however intend to describe one very valuable facet of this principle.

By now you are probably wondering how complicated is ducking in second position and what can "Ruff" possibly be offering us that we do not know?

Leading from a King

All too often I make the nice play of leading low sometimes out of necessity because I have no other lead, but many times on purpose from something like K74.

I look around the table and I see that RHO needs one trick to fulfill his bid and sometimes possibly his bid has been made and I glance at my LHO and see that he needs two tricks to make his bid with my partner either needing one or none to make his as I place the four on the table. Granted this can lose a trick quite easily for us so I tend to make this lead only when certain conditions or "feels" are met. For example signaling from my left-hand opponent showing club strength or because he has two or three tricks to go to make his bid and his pard's bid has been met.

Anyway, I lead the small card and Lefty supplies a small card while my partner plays his Queen. RHO plays small! Now my partner is sitting fat, dumb, and happy thinking typically that I have underled the Ace as he fires that suit right back!

@$#^&@&%&@$&&$! -- I cannot print what I am feeling at this moment when I see the card hit the table and this is why!

First off put yourself in the West seat!

You are holding in the suit in question the A52. When it is led the first time you do not have any problem ducking it because you only have three and it might be advantageous to duck it. Bu-u-u-t??

The decision regarding what to do will be very easy if the suit is immediately led back toward the hand with the Ace in fourth position.

So what's my beef, you ask? Well...I'd like to retain the lead in some other suit or either have him lead this suit because of one simple reason. Say I get the lead in some other suit and place a small card in this same suit on the table...Do you think the hand with the Ace is going to duck again? Hell no!

So here we are with the suit looking like this....

North Q 8 3 West A 9 2 East J 10 6 5 South K 7 4

As you can plainly see we only have one trick coming to us in this suit. We might squeak one if we can make West lead the suit. Since I have led this suit and partner has taken one trick with the Queen we really deserve nothing else in this suit unless we can make West lead it for us. Hmmmmmm? Is that really true? Well not exactly! If West could see all the cards that would be quite true. Most of the time we will not have any endplay to make on West and we need a better mousetrap! Does one exist? I happen to think so.

After we have taken the Queen and pard is smart enough not to fire that suit right back we wait. We either wait for West to lead the suit in which case we have an easy two tricks or we lead the suit...

We lead the suit lol! Anybody can see by looking at all four hands that West can easily duck our lead right around to his partner's Jack and they still get two tricks in this suit (quite possibly three if the suit is trumps). I am here to tell you that West will not take that chance especially if the suit is not Spades! Would you? I have been playing well over 25 years and I would have a problem ducking that suit lead again. Why?

For one thing I might lose my Ace on this second duck and for another it looks like the King and Queen are sitting behind me. The first trick was taken with the Queen and that is the card an opp should play to signal his pard when he holds the King and Queen. By playing the lower of two touching cards to force out an Ace he portrays this scenario to his partner.

So I ask you once again, "Would you duck twice?" LOL

Look once again at the diagram and you easily see the opps have all of the tricks in that suit but one.....My method costs nothing! We are truly entitled to one trick in this suit and we have taken it. By leading low again from my hand and placing the person with the Ace (or certainly where we think the Ace is) in the second position we present a guess/option for that opponent. If he originally held just two cards in this suit the Ace will fall anyway catching tiny cards and costing us nothing again.

Summary

When you win a trick with a Queen or King in third position, don't always assume your partner underled his Ace. Sometimes we have to lead from a Queen or King and sometimes we do so intentionally. When your pard does come up with some brilliancy don't hang him out to dry by shoving the suit right back at him after taking your trick!

All too often we are in a war for one trick to decide the fate of one hand or possibly the game. Why squander an option so easily? Make the man with the Ace guess! When you do, you effectively load the dice for your side. Why? Anytime some one is guessing they can guess wrong! The best that can happen for them is if they guess right they might make a bid and we still make ours. If they guess wrong they go set! I will take odds like that any day!

Regards,
Ruffkid1 (Jay Tomlinson)