This deal comes from a Spades game played in The Zone recently. I feel obligated to list it because it raises so many questions -- questions each and every partnership will be faced with sooner or later. The defense is not nearly as obvious as one might think. You hold this hand sitting West:

3
3
107652
AK10932

The score is 352 for you and 401 for the opps. Nil is a very reasonable bid with this hand, especially considering the score. In first position you indeed bid nil.

Your LHO bids 2 and your partner huddles for an eternity, it seems, and finally bids 2. RHO quickly bids 8.

It's intuitive now that you must bust your nil and try to set the opps' 10-bid, since a nil plus partner's 2-bid will still lose this game.

You start with the Ace and King of clubs. LHO plays the 4 and 5, your pard plays the 6 and then discards.. RHO plays the 7 and then the Q. What do you do next if East's discard were:

1. 4?
2. 8?

It's your play!

It looks as if LHO has four clubs: J854, hmmmm?

What exactly is partner saying with the low discard in hearts? What if partner had played the 8 on your King of clubs? Would that change anything? What if you and your partner had a lead convention that specifically caused you to lead the Ace from AK when you held an even number, and the King from AK when you had an odd number?

Ask yourself these questions and then decide how you would continue before looking at the solutions. What is partner saying in each case?

Solution

This is a real tough hand because of the fantastic falsecard that South played. It is obvious from the low/high order in clubs that his partner has a third club (or more) so South makes the only defensive play to give any trouble at all…….the Queen of clubs. This creates the illusion that your LHO started with four. Even considering all of this, West needs to look at what his partner is saying.

Partner indeed played before seeing the Queen hit the table, but still he played a low heart. This is very important! He bid 2 so he must have something, somewhere, and this low heart says "Do not lead hearts." So if partner does not like hearts he must have something in diamonds but yet he did not throw a big diamond asking for a diamond shift.

Another thing to consider is this. With his 8-bid, your RHO he must hold all of the big spades as well as length. If we think he is out of clubs then his partner surely has a club set up and RHO can take a pitch on it later after pulling spades. Even if partner gets overtrumped it at least saves us a trick. Remember, if partner feared losing a natural trump trick he would have signaled in some other fashion. He is asking you not to shift but keep clubs coming.

Now for the second example: Suppose partner would have played the 8 on your second club? Now it is obvious that he wants a shift and does not want to trump anything. Suppose he held:

A
K97643
AQ83
6

He would not want to trump with the Ace of trumps; he would be dying for a diamond shift before trumps are pulled and hoping like crazy that the diamond King is finessable.

In situations like these do not assume that you have to make the decisions for both sides. Forget about the drop of the club Queen and pay attention to what partner asked you to do first and foremost. In the actual play the cards were thus:

North K 9 5 J 10 8 2 K J 9 J 5 2 West 3 3 10 7 6 5 2 A K 10 9 3 2 East 10 8 K 9 7 6 5 4 A Q 8 3 6 South A Q J 7 6 4 2 A Q 4 Q 8 7 The bidding: West North East South nil 2 2 8 West led the A

On the second club lead East dropped the 8 and his pard shifted to the 5. East successfully finessed the Queen and then tried cashing the Ace. This was ruffed and then the Ace, Queen, and a small spade were led from South. The King of dimes provided a heart pitch, and N/S won a game that could have easily went the other way. Note the heart was also finessable and the only way to get four tricks is to continue with a third club. I suppose every newbie would set this hand but because of the excellent falsecard and signaling techniques our illustrious E/W pair did not.

I was kibitzing this game and the fireworks went howling in the postmortems. "BLAH, BLAH, BLAH…" It's your fault, no it was your fault, no it was your fault lol.

My opinion? The 8 signaled a shift to diamonds. When played, West did the right thing. East should have played a low heart so clubs would have been continued. East's argument was that he already assumed Pard would be leading a third club but simply wanted to show him where his stuff was.

My rebuttal to that is this… "Your partner Nilled and has taken two tricks!" "How many more times do you think he is going to get in the lead? Why tell the opps where your stuff is?"

Regards,
Ruffkid1 (Jay Tomlinson)