Cling to those `useless' cards

Occasionally a deal will come along in which you must cling like a barnacle to a collection of low cards in one suit. Sometimes the highest card isn’t as low as it looks. But today’s deal exhibits a different reason.

In an international teams event, one pair reached the borderline six-diamond contract, via the given auction. They held only a combined 23 high-card points, but five heart tricks would have been enough to bring home the slam. (Note that if either North had held the heart jack extra or South had had three spades and two clubs, the slam would have been excellent.)

West led a top club and shifted to the spade queen. South won with the ace and ran off six rounds of diamonds. West discarded four clubs and one of his

“useless” hearts. Now it was easy for South to play hearts from the top and claim when the jack dropped.

Suppose instead that West defends better, keeping all four of his hearts. Even though the percentage play in hearts is to play off the king, ace and queen, South will probably be aware that West has retained four hearts. If so, there are 10 low doubletons that East could hold and only five jack doubletons. So it is twice as likely that West has jack-fourth than four low cards.

If South thinks this way, he will cash the heart king, then lead a heart to dummy’s 10, going down with the actual distribution.

When you have length in a suit where an opponent is also long, it will usually be right to keep your holding intact.