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Maximum overtricks
This deal comes from my newest source for material – an online money game. With both sides vulnerable, IMP scoring, I held:
♠ A K 5 3 ♥ A 4 ♦ K 7 4 ♣ Q 10 8 2
You open 1NT and partner responds 2♦. Over your 2♥, he bids 3♦. That is natural and game-forcing. With no fit and lots of black-suit stoppers, you try 3NT. Partner bids 4♥. He likely has six-plus hearts, some diamonds and slam interest. You elect to pass (which was the winning action in The Bridge World). A low club is led, and here’s what you see:
Because there are likely two trump losers, not to mention other issues, slam is poor.
Your main concern playing matchpoints is overtricks. Think of dummy as the master hand (always use the long trump hand as the master hand): You won’t lose any tricks in spades or clubs. The fourth round of diamonds and the trump suit are the key issues. How should you play the hearts?
Your best chance to lose only one trump trick (other than finding ♥K Q doubleton) is that RHO started with Q–x or K–x. Lead the ♥J from dummy, intending to let it run. It loses to left-hand opponent’s ♥K and he returns a heart. You are pleased to see RHO produce the queen under your ace. Now, you are up to 11 tricks and have only the diamonds to worry about.
Rather than relying on 3–3 diamonds, you should first try to ruff out the ♣K. You ruff a club in dummy, draw the remaining trump (RHO throws a club), and come to the ♠A to ruff another club.
Nothing good happens, but before testing diamonds, you should win the ♠K and ruff a spade in dummy. At this point, you are almost sure to have your 12th trick.
Even without knowing much about squeezes, consider what you’ve done. Only one player can guard against your ♣Q. After playing three rounds of spades and ruffing a spade in dummy, only one player can retain a spade guard against the low spade in your hand. So, if diamonds aren’t 3–3, you will still be OK if the player with four diamonds also has to protect against one of those black-suit threats in your hand.
Sorry about all the squeeze terminology – that’s not an area I usually go to in my intermediate articles. A look at the full deal might make it clearer:
You won the ♣A and passed the ♥J to West. You won the heart return, ruffed a club and drew the last trump. You came to the ♠A to ruff another club. Then you played the ♠K and ruffed a spade with dummy’s last trump. At this point, dummy’s last four cards are the ♦A Q 5 3. In your hand, you have ♦K 7 and a loser in each black suit. As you can see, East can’t cope. If he retained all four diamonds, he would have had to let go of his fourth spade. All you have to watch is to see if your ♣Q is good, or if somebody throws away the long spade. If neither happens, you just try the diamonds and hope the thirteenth is good. Here, proper technique by declarer would produce plus 680 and an excellent matchpoint score.
