This deal was reviewed in my previous article but wasn’t done explicitly enough and needs some more analysis.
Board 6 from Tuesday 30/01/24
Dealer E EW Vul
As we can see, Deep Finesse can make 4H easily by simply playing West for a doubleton ace of diamonds, losing just two diamonds and one club. But that’s not as much fun as allowing West to ruff a losing club and tempting West to then switch to ace then queen of diamonds. That is two losers for declarer and a third seems inevitable, so West cashing the DA doesn’t seem to cost the defence.
But take another look. When the third spade is ruffed, with dummy’s queen, this is the situation:
Declarer calls for dummy’s trump and East discards the diamond nine on it. Declarer overtakes with the ten and now cashes the last trump and dummy parts with the ten of diamonds but East has no answer: Discard the diamond jack and declarer makes the eight; discard a club and dummy makes two club tricks. This is a much more fun line that just playing West for a doubleton ace of diamonds, and makes an overtrick if West can be tempted to ruff dummy’s loser and then cash the ace of diamonds.
The things that can be learnt here: know where to win the first trick; lead towards a high card when you know left hand opponent could ruff that suit but would then be ruffing a loser anyway. See things how the defence might see them and tempt them to do what you would like them to do. And, finally, practice your squeeze play - you never know when, or how, the need for it may arise.
9
Q9742
T73
A985