Play Too Fast Series - Article Five
By Mike Lawrence

When you play a hand, you need to plan not only the current trick, but the succeeding tricks as well. In this series, you will be shown a hand and how it was played. At the end, you will be asked to determine where the play went wrong and what should have been done about it.

Where Am I?

When you play a hand, you must always lead from the right hand, hence the title of this article, "Where am I?"

West leads the Jack of spades. How do you play?

Here is how one South played the hand. He won with the ace of spades and came to his hand with the ace of diamonds. He took the club finesse, won by East with the king. West, most annoyingly, ruffed the diamond return, and the ensuing heart lead gave East two heart tricks.

How should South have played? Should he have plunked down the ace and another club? That would fail if West had the king and East had the ace of hearts. Is there a safer line yet?

There is. In the first line, declarer came to his hand with the ace of diamonds and took the club finesse at trick three. Better is for South to finesse in clubs at trick two.

The way to do that?

Overtake dummy's queen of spades with the king. You only get two spade tricks by playing this way, but you get to draw trumps more safely. In any event, the lost spade trick can be retrieved by using the diamonds later. What difference does it make how may spade tricks you get if you only need two?

If you take the king of spades at trick one and finesse in clubs, East will win, but he can't get West in for a heart lead. In fact, if East doesn't take his ace of hearts, you will discard all three of your little hearts on the diamonds and will ruff your little spade later in the play. Such a difference. False economy costs you two tricks. It is sad since saving the third spade trick could not gain you a trick. It was an illusion only.

J 10 9 3 Q 10 9 5 3 2 4 8 5

A Q K 6 K J 10 9 3 A 10 7 3 K 7 2 8 7 4 A Q Q J 9 6 4

8 6 5 4 A J 8 7 6 5 2 K 2

West did something good and something bad on opening lead. He listened to the bidding and learned that leading a stiff diamond was foolish. It turns out that leading a stiff diamond might get a diamond ruff but it would be a very poor lead in general. In general, West should try to set up some tricks before declarer can get rid of his losers. If West had listened to the bidding, he would have led a heart which would have put declarer down immediately.

His choice of a spade was not hopeless, but it was less rewarding than the heart lead and since the bidding dictated a heart lead, that is what West should have led.

One last observation. Did you notice that in the bidding, North cue-bid spades and East did not double? This is a pretty strong hint that East has nothing in spades, thus giving even more weight to the heart lead.