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This is the next in a series of challenge hands written by Jack Stocken. We hope you'll enjoy!

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Playing Catch up by Jack Stocken

My partner, Phil Godfrey, knew that we needed a good result on the last board of the Yorkshire Pairs to improve our ranking. 3♣ was forcing, showing a strong hand with a four card major and five or more clubs, although you should discuss this sequence with your partner as it could be ambiguous.

North’s 3♦ was a cue bid, agreeing clubs and showing the ace of diamonds - this was enough for South to launch Roman Key Card Blackwood. North’s 5♥ response promised two key cards with no queen of trumps (clubs) and the borderline slam was reached.

Play through the hand

West led the queen of hearts against 6♣ which declarer won with the ace in hand and drew trumps in four rounds. He then played the king of hearts, either hoping for Qx or Jx of hearts in one hand or for the suit to divide 3 – 3. Fortunately, the latter was the case, so declarer avoided losing two heart tricks.

Declarer played another heart which West won with the jack and wisely switched to the ten of diamonds (and not a spade) which declarer won in dummy with the ace.

Now came crunch time – who should declarer finesse for the queen of spades? Well, there was a two way finesse position available but Phil surmised that East was more likely to have length in spades as he had shown up with a singleton club and only three hearts.

The queen of spades is more likely to be with the hand with the greater length, so Phil cashed the king of spades and then played the ten of spades, low from East and low from hand. With a sigh of relief he cashed the ace of spades and that was 6♣ made, a 94% score. This pulled us up to second place.

One other pair made 6♣ and two went down. The others were in 3NT making twelve tricks when East led a spade and eleven tricks when East led a diamond. 

West led the ace of clubs which declarer trumped in hand and drew the trumps. The fate of the contract depended on finding the queen of spades but declarer saw an extra chance if diamonds were 3 – 3 as two spades could go away on the long diamonds.

So at trick four, declarer ducked a diamond to East’s jack. Ducking here was necessary as it created an extra entry to dummy and also follows the maxim “If you are going to lose a trick, lose it early”.

East returned a club, ruffed in hand by declarer who then played ace of diamonds and another. Declarer was disappointed to see diamonds divide 4 – 2 as he now had to guess who had the queen of spades.

West had shown up with the ace of clubs and just the queen of diamonds so was odds on to have the queen of spades to give him enough points for the 2♣ overcall.

Thus declarer cashed the ace of spades in case East had a singleton queen and then led the jack of spades, West played low in tempo and low from dummy. Declarer cashed the king of spades and the long spade so 6♥ made.

Note that 6♠ is a better contract than 6♥ as declarer does not need to guess the queen of spades, unless a diamond is led.

Keep learning with Jack! Join one of his classes here.

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