Page 23 - ABF Newsletter June 2024

WORKSHOPS WITH WILL with Will Jenner-O’Shea DECLARER PLAY IN 4-4 FITS This month’s Workshop looked at declarer play, and had a dis- cussion about playing in 4-4 fits. Here is an example where you and your partner have an uncontested auction: Dummy (Responder) \]985 \[9863 \}AKQ83 \{7 You (Opener) \]AK3 \[AKQ2 \}64 \{J652 You open 1NT, 15-17. Partner bids Stayman, and then raises you to 4\[. They lead the queen of spades against your 4\[ con- tract. If you win the opening lead and start drawing trumps, East only has one heart, and starts discard- ing clubs. You could potentially draw two or three rounds of trumps with your \[AKQ and leave West with the \[J as a winner. It is well-known technique, that when the opponents have one trump left, and it is a winner, you should leave it outstanding. If you switch to diamonds now, you can play the top two diamonds, but when you lead the \}Q, West can trump, and dummy’s little diamonds are not yet win- ners. Dummy has one trump left, but can’t establish their diamonds anymore. You have four little clubs, which are all losers, and 4\[ will now go down. Note that if you stopped drawing trumps after two rounds, seeing that East had shown out, you could end up in the same unmakeable position if West leads back a trump after ruffing your \}Q winner. One useful technique, when handling a bad split, is to play your winners, and even though West trumps, they are trumping with a trump that was going to win anyway. This sometimes helps you keep control. The issue on this hand though is that there are bad breaks in both diamonds and hearts, and you don’t have enough tricks. If hearts and diamonds had split nicely, this hand would have easily made, and possibly made up to 12 tricks. However, the bad breaks mean that you are at risk of going down. One tip about playing in 4-4 fits is that if one hand has very strong trumps, they can be used to draw trumps. You should look to use the weaker trumps for ruffing, before you draw trumps. A great way to play this hand is to win the opening lead with your ace of spades and play a club im- mediately, to void dummy in clubs. You will lose the lead, but when you get the lead back, you can lead your \{5 and trump it in dummy. If possible, you can try to lead another club and trump in in dummy. This will get you one or two more tricks than you would have made if you didn’t trump any clubs. An additional tip when you are playing in a 4-4 fit is to usually avoid trumping from both hands, unless you can make enough tricks from completely cross- trumping the whole hand. Here is a link to let you bid and play this deal. You can replay the hand to see how it would go if you tried it a different way. Australian Bridge Federation Ltd. Newsletter: June 2024 Page: 23