From                  18th July, 2007, Board 15

                                          Theme               Counting Points

                                                                     Basic Squeeze Technique

                                          Difficulty           * * *

                                          Dlr East             E-W Vul             Hands Rotated

                                                                                               for Convenience
 

West leads the K♥, and when Dummy comes down you see that Partner did not give you any leeway for your White vs Red overcall.  East overtakes the Heart and continues with the Q♥ and then the J♥.

There are two issues to be addressed:

-         Are you going to ruff high (playing North for the Q♣), or are you going to ruff with the Jack (playing South for the Q♣)?

-         If you guess the Q♣ successfully, you’ll have 10 tricks.  Where is the 11^th?

SOLUTION

The immediate problem is to get the Club guess right, but let’s look beyond that and search for the 11^th trick first.

The 11th trick is most likely to come from a Spade-Diamond squeeze, and, with the Spade and Diamond length more likely to be with the short Hearts in the West hand.  In most cases, that squeeze will require West to have some HCP's in those cards (though West could conceivably be 5-2-5-1 without either Queen).

OK, back to the immediate problem of how to ruff that 3^rd round of Hearts.  East opened the bidding and has shown up with just the ♥AQJ so far.  By necessity, we are placing West with length and/or strength in Spades and Diamonds.  East didn’t open a Weak Two, surely he is favorite to hold the Q♣.

Yes indeed, so we ruff with the Jack (which holds), draw trumps, play AK♦ and ruff a Diamond, and cash the rest of the trumps.  The full deal:

	♠ KT5 ♥ T72 ♦ AK64 ♣ A85
♠ QJ76 ♥ K8 ♦ JT95 ♣ 432	North    West         East            South	♠ 984 ♥ AQJ963 ♦ Q32 ♣ Q
	♠ A32 ♥ 54 ♦ 87 ♣ KJT976

Keys to Success

   - Realizing that a Spade-Diamond squeeze was required for the 11th trick

   - Realizing that if West was to have Spade and Diamond values that East probably had the Q♣ and

     accordingly ruffing the third round of Hearts with the Jack

   - Ruffing a Diamond to "isolate the menace" in the West hand

   - Running the Clubs to inflict the squeeze on West

Postscript 1

Do you see the importance of ruffing that Diamond?  It's called "isolating the menace", which in this case makes sure that East's guard in Diamonds is ruffed out.  If Declarer neglects to do this, East will be able to guard the Diamonds and the squeeze will not take effect (on the run of the Clubs, West keeps Spades and East keeps Diamonds).

Postscript 2

East could have beaten the contract if he had overtaken the first Heart and shifted to a Spade.  Then a later Spade lead would break up the squeeze.  This was far from obvious.