Nice Lead

Playing in the Life Master Pairs, I pick up the South hand below.

	KJ7532 A7 AK AK9

	A4 K854 Q9753 J3

North	South
2	3
3	3NT
6NT	Pass

Over partner's 2

, 3

showed exactly one ace and one king. Perhaps I ought to have raised his spade suit, but with an honor in each suit, I chose to bid notrump. Knowing I had my two high cards, partner figured there ought to be a shot at slam at least, so he just bid it. Perhaps 4NT might have been more prudent, but we have reached the normal spot.

West is a strong player, but I've never seen East before. The opening lead is the 9, to which I follow small from dummy. East contributes the 10. I win, of course, and have a real problem. This is matchpoints, and 6NT looks to be the normal spot. The overtrick is worth as much as the contract. The opening lead suit is an odd choice, very odd. The only material cases, however, are 986 and Q986. It's possible that he led from Q9x and East contributed a falsecard, but that's too much to expect, even in this event. All in all, I don't think West would lead from either of those suits, but I have to dope out what is going on. If I get it wrong, I'm in trouble; if he led from the four-card holding, I am probably going down. If he led from three, I need to score the overtrick to win the board. So my risk is roughly half a board either way. I don't see any good way to figure out which occurred, but I'm not completely dead if I play for the drop and when the opponents do something super, sometimes they get to win the board. Using that reasoning, I play a low spade to the K at trick two. East pitches a club. Rats. He got me. Tonight, he'll have a story.

Is there anything I can do now? Cashing out for down one is pointless; down 10 and down one are roughly the same score. Let's see---if I can score five diamond tricks, I have 11 tops and I might be able to manage an extra trick in the end position. Problem is, I have no way to rectify the count for a squeeze, and an endplay is about as likely as a trump coup. That means that I can't put any pressure on East, even though he rates to have the length in hearts and clubs. In any case, there's nothing to do but try diamonds. I cash the top diamonds and both follow. Since I need to use the K as an entry to run diamonds and it's my last entry to hand, I need to cash both high hearts. If things go wrong, I'm not taking many tricks, but I think I see a chance. Both follow to the hearts, and when I cash the diamond, pitching a spade, both follow, so I'm up to eleven tricks. That's good---only one fewer than when I started!

Since I have two entries to dummy, I think a squeeze without the count is possible. I'll need West to have either six clubs or both the queen and the ten. In the latter case, a double finesse would work, but I don't have the two entries needed to take two hooks. When I cash two more diamonds, it's clear, however, that West has come under some pressure. He pitches one club on the first diamond, and the position is now:

	J7 --- --- AK9

	--- 85 7 J3

I very much hope West has both clubs, as I'll manage to make this if so. I cash the last diamond. West pitches a club, so I dump the second to last spade (let's hope a pair of natural sevens takes the pot!). When I lead a club, West's queen and ten fall under dummy's honors, so I make twelve tricks. Phew. When I was about to lead the last diamond, the position around the table was

	J7 --- --- AK9
Q8 --- --- Q108		Immaterial
	--- 85 7 J3

If West discards a spade, I pitch a club on the beer card, cross to a high club, and exit with a spade. West has to lead to dummy. When he pitches a club, I have three club tricks. As it turned out, West had only two hearts to start with, but in the end position, if he had started with another one, he'd be squeezed out of it. Even if it were not a winner, it'd be an entry to partner's hand, which would break the squeeze, but there just isn't enough room to hold three clubs, a spade, and a heart in four cards.

I don't think I've ever seen this particular triple squeeze without the count before, and while I'm trying to determine its exact place in the taxonomy of squeezes, partner remarks, "nicely done, but it would have been a lot easier if you got it right at trick one, no?" What can I say? This seems like a good time to compliment West on his nice lead.