Let me now repeat the hands from the last article for you and suggest how the defence should have gone against 1NT doubled.
Board 7 Dealer S All Vul
The best opening lead is a low heart, with great controls and entries in the other suits and an as yet unrevealed dummy. However, when the awful dummy appears and East produces the queen and declarer gasps and then wins the ace immediately, West should start thinking, and doing his maths.
West can infer that declarer has the king as well as ace of hearts. Judging by the play and cards in dummy, East’s queen was most likely singleton. Declarer has led a low diamond, therefore can almost certainly be placed with the queen. That accounts for NINE of declarer’s high card points, so declarer can not have both black aces. East will have either a long club or spade suit, and also at least TEN high card points. With a long spade suit, East would probably have bid 3S and looked for game in spades, so has longer clubs. West should, therefore, instead of limply following low to the diamond, rise with the king and switch to a black suit. If declarer has the ace of clubs, he won’t have the queen as well, so West should switch to the king of clubs after winning declarer’s first diamond lead. When East overtakes the jack next, and takes another four club tricks, West has no problem with discards and a spade switch from East completes declarer’s misery, +1100 to EW. Even if West does not win the first diamond, EW should be able to score +800 with a bit of maths and logical thinking. That should not be too much to ask from an intelligent partner, should it?
T62
9643
J876
86