Reading The News, Part 1

"You can observe a lot by just watching." -- Yogi Berra

In this exercise we will use the first step in Declarer's Arch to do some observing.

South Deals N-S Vul	♠ A Q 10 5 ♥ A K ♦ Q J 10 5 4 ♣ A 10
	N W E S
	♠ 4 3 ♥ 7 6 2 ♦ A K 9 8 7 3 ♣ 9 7

West	North	East	You
			2 ♦
Pass	2 NT1	Pass	3 ♦2
Pass	4 NT3	Pass	5 ♥4
Pass	6 ♦	All pass

1. asks outside feature
2. no outside A or K
3. key-card Blackwood
4. two keycards, no ♦ Q

West leads the ♥ J against your 6 ♦ contract. What can you tell about the opponents' hands? (These opponents play standard leads.)

Step 1: Analyze the lead:

It looks like the jack from jack-ten-whatever. But it could be the jack from jack-doubleton, or even the singleton jack. It could even be the jack from queen-jack doubleton. So which is it?

• Could it be a singleton jack? There are eight hearts in the opponent's hands. A 7-1 split occurs less than 3% of the time; any specific card being a singleton on your left is approximately a 0.2% chance. A singleton jack isn't worth worrying about here.
• Could it be a doubleton jack? A 6-2 split only happens 17% of the time; your left-hand opponent will hold the doubleton half of that. A doubleton jack on your left is something less than 2%; not very likely.
• So who has the ♥ Q? It's most likely that West's lead is a normal jack from jack-ten-whatever, so East most likely has the heart queen.

What about diamonds? You're only missing two small diamonds. West could have led a diamond as a passive lead, but chose not to; that's not much of a clue in this case.

Who has the spade honors? There aren't many clues about the spade suit. West knows better than to underlead a king against a slam. But if West doesn't have the ♠ K, she might have been willing to lead a spade. You denied any outside ace or king, so West doesn't have to worry about finessing her partner. Since West had a reasonable natural lead from the jack-ten of hearts, there's no reason to think she would have preferred leading from a broken spade holding. So you can't tell much about the spades.

Who has the club honors? There is a critical observation here: West did not lead the ♣ K. If West held the ♣ KQ-whatever, the king would have been a much more likely lead against a slam in a suit contract. So West probably does not have both high club honors. East almost certainly has either the ♣ K or the ♣ Q, and might have both. By the same reasoning, West probably does not have the  ♣ QJ either.

So here's what you know, not for sure but close enough:

• West has the ♥ 10
• East has the ♥ Q
• West does not have the ♣ KQ or the ♣ QJ
• East has either the ♣ K or the ♣ Q, and might have both

That is quite a lot of information from just one card, don't you think?

And now that you now that East has one of the high club honors, maybe you can endplay her with one of them.

-- Ray
Better Bridge in 5 Minutes. Guaranteed! (or the next one is free)