From                   20th February, 2008, Board 22

                                          Theme                Isolating the Menace

                                          Difficulty            * * * 

                                          Dlr East              E-W Vul               Hands Rotated

                                                                                                  for Convenience

3♥ was a Transfer, 4♠ was a super-accept (yes, that bid usually shows four-card support), then Roman Key Card, after which 5♦ was the Queen Ask and 5♥ showed the Q♠ plus the K♥.  A sound auction to the best spot.

West makes the time-honored lead of a trump against a grand slam.  When Dummy goes down it’s easy enough to count up 12 top tricks, where is the 13^th trick coming from?  The obvious answer is from a Heart ruff in the short hand.  So, you draw a second round of trumps but alas East pitches a Heart.  Now, you cannot ruff that Heart without setting up a natural trump trick for the defense.  What’s your Plan B?

SOLUTION

One possibility is to hope for some luck in Diamonds.  That luck could be either a 3-3 break, or else West holding Jxxx or Txxx, in either case a 4^th Diamond trick will be available (perhaps a guess will be required).

Can you do better than merely relying on luck?  Yes, there are squeeze possibilities.  If either player holds 4+ Diamonds and 5+ Clubs, then on the play of the Spades and Hearts he will be forced to unguard one of the minors.

So, one possibility (which as you will see is destined to fail!), is to cash a 3^rd Spade, cross to the A♥, play the remaining trumps and cash the K♥.

The squeeze doesn’t work, because this is the situation just before the K♥ is cashed:

                        Dummy

                        ♠

                        ♥ 72

                        ♦ KQ85

                        ♣ 2

West                                        East

♠                                              ♠

♥ JT6                                      ♥

♦ 3                                           ♦ JT76

♣ 973                                      ♣ QJT

                        Declarer

                        ♠

                        ♥ K

                        ♦ A94

                        ♣ AK8

When the Heart is now played East can pitch a Club and West’s humble 9♣ is able to protect that suit.

What’s the solution?  Yes, Declarer must use that 5^th trump to ruff a Club.  This play removes West’s Club guard, meaning that only East is able to guard the suit, so that now he really does get squeezed in the minors.  The process of ruffing out East’s Club guard is known in squeeze parlance as “isolating the menace”.

Keys to Success

-         Realizing that it was not necessary to rely on good luck in Diamonds.

-         Ruffing a Club to “isolate the menace”

Post Script

This is a hand where expert knowledge of squeeze play might be fatal to Declarer!  It’s possible to visualize a Double Squeeze, where West is squeezed in Hearts and Diamonds and East is squeezed in Hearts and Clubs.  Heady stuff!  To cater for this possibility, South draws three rounds of Spades, cashes A♣, ruffs a Club, draws the last trump, then plays K♦ (unblocking the Nine), and a Diamond to the Ace.  At this point, Declarer has kept all her squeeze irons in the fire, but now, when the K♣ is cashed, she must make a decision:

-         If she pitches a Heart, the Double Squeeze is abandoned, and now the Hearts are cashed (ending in hand) in the hope that a minor suit squeeze can be inflicted.

-         If she pitches a Diamond, she will be hoping that West has already been squeezed out of his Heart guard and that now the cashing of the remaining Diamond winner will squeeze East in Hearts and Clubs.

Which squeeze to select will not be obvious, but it’s always nice, in the bar after the game, to break out the champagne while announcing “I made a grand slam on a Non-Simultaneous Double Squeeze!”  That may be the lure that seduces some experts into selecting the wrong squeeze, in which case they will end up crying in their beer “I went down in a cold grand slam!”

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