Advanced Declarer Problem of the Month
October, 1999
This month's hand occurred on a popular bridge software program.
MPs
Dealer: South
Vulnerable: Both
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NORTH  A 3 T 5 4 A 9 8 7 6 5 A 9 |
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SOUTH J T 9A K J 2K Q 4 2K 6 |
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| AUCTION | |||
| SOUTH | WEST | NORTH | EAST |
| 1N | 2 |
3N | Pass |
| Pass | Pass | ||
West leads the 6, you duck, East plays the deuce, and you win in hand with the nine.
Plan the play.
Solution
You need to know a little something about squeeze play to give this one the best go for thirteen tricks. It appears west has underled the
KQ, and given his 2 call, you can
pretty much assume he has the Q as well (if he doesn't, then east has it singleton or doubleton,
and it will fall). Since west must guard both hearts and spades, you should look for a squeeze play against him for the thirteenth trick.
Obviously the J must be one of your threat cards, and, at first glance, it appears the
J might serve as the second threat. However, look carefully. If you cash all of your winners,
keeping the K as an entry to both threats, look what happens when you play the squeeze card
(7).
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EAST | |
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SOUTH |
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Since west plays AFTER the south hand, the squeeze fails. If the J is pitched, west retains the
K; if the J is thrown, wests keeps the
Q9--down one in both cases. Perhaps you noticed the
T in the north hand is a perfectly good threat card; in fact, since it is known that east has at
most two hearts, ANY heart in the north hand is a valid threat against west. The problem is that you have no entry to the north hand. After playing the
7 and pitching the J from your hand, west must
let go of a heart in order to retain the K. Now when you play the
K, west's queen drops, and the T is now good--but,
alas, no way back to the north hand.
The key is to realize that for the squeeze to function, your heart threat must lie in the NORTH hand, AND that you will require an entry after the squeeze card
has been played. That entry must be the A. So, after winning the opening lead, cash the
A (maybe you will drop a stiff queen), the AK, and run
the diamonds, arriving at this position:
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Now, cash the 7, pitching the J. West has no answer.
If he lets go of the heart guard, play the K (dropping the
Q) and return to the established T via the
A. If west, instead, discards his spade guard, cash the
A (dropping the K) and reach the now good
J via the K. You have just executed a
criss-cross squeeze!
The full deal:
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EAST |
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SOUTH |
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