The Squeeze-Trim-Endplay: Hand
The contract is 6 It is not obvious to me how the hand should be played. Anyway, you play out your king and queen of clubs, with both opponents following. Now your slam is almost certain. If you want to follow the problem from the book, you should now plan your play. Obviously, you can ruff one of your diamond losers. You can pitch the other diamond loser on the fifth round of hearts (ruffing the fourth round). So the only danger is a 5-0 heart break. If you lead towards the So the problem is, what do you do if your If Righty has more than 3 spades, you cannot run a squeeze-trim-endplay and there is no way to make the hand against reasonable defense. So assume that Righty has 3 or fewer spades. If you count your two trumps as two winners, then everything looks perfect for a squeeze-trim-endplay. You have the right loser count -- two losers. The heart suit is perfect for endplay. You have ample diamond controls. Best of all, you know the heart situation for certainty, so there is no misguessing how to play the hand when you come to the critical choice of whether to attack hearts or trim diamonds. The fly-in-the-ointment (besides for the assumption about Lefty's spades) is making those two trump separately. If you could just cash them on separate tricks you could come down to:
Then (again assuming Righty had no spades to save), Righty would have been squeezed down to one diamond, which you can now trim and run your endplay. However, there is no way to make your trumps separately. You cannot ruff a diamond until you cash the ace, and once you have cashed the ace, you need the trump on the board as a control in diamonds. So you can't first ruff a diamond and then run a squeeze-trim-endplay. The trump in your hand is also conceptually awkward. You could think of it as a control in hearts -- as long as you are threatening to ruff a heart, your fifth heart is a threat. However, the usual reason for using a trump as a control is to prevent both defenders from stopping the suit. Here, that reason does not apply, because only Righty stops hearts -- your fourth heart is an extended menace all by itself. An extra trump plays no role in the heart endplay. And if you don't cash it, there would seem to be room for an extra card in Righty's hand. (If you are running a regular strip squeeze prior to an endplay, you would have to play out all of your trumps to make the squeeze work.) Nonetheless, the squeeze-trim-endplay works fine with a trump in each hand. When you play out your spade winners, Righty is squeezed out of his excess diamonds. Yes, the trump in your hand plays no role in the endplay, but it works just fine as a heart control, because during the squeeze portion, the trump is used to threaten setting up dummy's fifth heart.
Righty is squeezed. If Righty has pitched a heart, you can duck a round of hearts, win the diamond return in your hand (with the ace), then play ace and ruff a heart, setting up the long heart. Your entry to dummy is the trump -- so you needed to be able to win with the ace of diamonds.
If Righty has saved 4 hearts, then Righty has at most just two diamonds and can be trimmed. You play ace of diamonds and then ruff a diamond, reducing both board and dummy to a four-card ending (instead of the traditional three-card ending).
You then lead a heart from dummy, endplaying Righty into leading away from the |
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52
A1032