This will be the final article dealing with the “Rule of 11”. I will be continuing later with defence for those interested, but to save any confusion with the normal X-Clubs reviews, the coming articles on defence will be titled “XC-Def” and numbered from 01.
Now for the final two play problems:
Dealer South All Vul
South opened 1NT and North raised to 3NT. A very ordinary deal with ordinary bidding. West led the four of spades, as per the book: “fourth highest of longest and strongest”. When dummy played the eight, East covered with the NINE. It was fairly clear that West had the ace or king but not both and declarer had the other high card. East had to hope that West also had the ten. No such luck as you can see. But... when declarer won with the king and then played on diamonds, East won the ace and returned the preserved queen of spades. That now swallowed up the jack from dummy and declarer’s king could no longer take a trick when West’s A76 were good enough to cover declarer’s K52! By playing the nine at trick one, East had created something out of nothing, helped by paying attention to the rule of 11 and realising that playing the queen at trick one was never going to be a winning play. 3NT still made but others were making Overtricks.
Now let’s look the final problem. This one is quite different because it features a trump contract, where the defence needs to be quite different to defending against No Trumps. Why? The crucial difference between No Trumps and a trump contract is that you should NEVER lead your ‘fourth highest’ from a suited headed by the ace against a trump contract whereas against No Trumps that is nearly always the best lead. Why? Because against a suit contract you will almost certainly never be able to establish more than one other trick, and declarer is likely to make a cheap trick with the king. You must keep your ace to serve a better purpose. Nor is taking your ace at trick one. Against No Trumps, you will need to lose a trick or two early to set up tricks in your own suit.
Now that you see the difference and have agreed that you will NEVER under-lead an ace against a TRUMP contract, look at what happened when problem 4 arose in play.
Dealer North All Vul
The bidding is irrelevant and before you say 3NT should be the contract, it shouldn’t make. But 4S is stone cold unless.... West, against 4S, led the diamond six. With long trumps and so many points there was no future in leading from a short suit. The diamond lead was no doubt best. Declarer called for the TEN from dummy, but East followed with the EIGHT, an encouraging signal. Declarer had to win the ace and paid dearly for being too clever. When he played on trumps, West was able to win the second trump and continue diamonds through the Q-3 in dummy, and continue to play a forcing game when in with the ace of clubs. The defence triumphed because they trusted each other: East trusted that West would NOT have under-led the ace of diamonds, and therefore, using the rule of 11, declarer had to have a SINGLETON ace and was just being a cute by playing the ten from dummy. Declarer had shot himself in the foot because keeping the queen AND ten in dummy would have safeguarded him from a further attack in the diamond suit if West had the jack, as he did. The smirks on the E-W faces were something to behold!
J8
KT4
KQJ9
KJ94