The First Day of Christmas – Finding the King of Israel
Tonight I was playing with my brother Lorne. Lorne is a brilliant man. He is a lawyer and one of the best. He is a pretty good at just about everything he does. But he doesn’t spend much time playing cards so his bridge skills still need further development. When he does play it is almost always at the duplicate club near his house. Still, he likes a friendly rubber with the family as much as anything. A chance to best his siblings.
Sitting North, I pick up this decent hand vulnerable against not.
Lorne opens with 1♠ and my sister Judi jumps to three clubs, preemptively.
I like my hand. It is a little flat but I have controls and my high cards seem well placed. I am certainly worth a cuebid to create a game force and set up an opportunity to look for a spade slam. So I bid 4♣. My son, Colin, a strong and imaginative player, bids 5♣ . Lorne cuebids 5♦ which is passed to me.
I still like my hand and the auction has made it better. It looks like Lorne has some extra values, himself. He not only had enough to compete at the five level but enough to cuebid on the way. Our side is rich in controls and it is hard for me to imagine a hand where he wouldn’t have a good play for a spade slam, so I bid 6♠ ending the auction.
The auction has been:
The opening lead is the ♣K and Lorne does not looked displeased when I put down the dummy. While I know it isn’t the way things are done in serious games I go around the table to see what Lorne has before heading to the kitchen to get some eggnog and mince tarts for the table.
Standing behind Lorne, this is what I see:
I know how I would play the hand. And so I leave the table with some confidence that things will go well.
When I come back holding a tray of goodies I can see that the hand is wrapping up but the defense has two tricks. I wonder what went wrong.
Counting his losers Lorne could see that he was solid outside the trump suit. His third diamond could be parked on dummy’s long heart. At trick two he set about playing trumps. He played a trump from dummy and when East played the ♠8 he played the ♠Q. West won with the ♠K and, as it turned out, East had the ♠J and ♠10 left. It was impossible for Lorne to avoid another trump loser. It was hard luck that the preemptor had the singleton ♠K.
Colin certainly took advantage of the vulnerability with his aggressive 5♣ bid. The game stops for a while for snacks and we discuss this hand. Colin, who has an extensive knowledge of all things bridge, including the literature, points out that the Rabbi’s Rule would have worked. The Rabbi’s Rule states that when the king is singleton offside, declarer should play the ace! Not only that, but the spade king carries the image of King David, the biblical king. Somehow this all makes sense on the birthday of Jesus, the “King of Israel.”
But there really is a better reason for playing the ♠ A. Lorne can afford to lose one spade trick. If the spades are distributed two-two it really doesn’t matter how he plays the suit. When the spades are distributed three-one he cannot make it if Judi, West, has the three spades. So we can ignore that case. Suppose that East, Colin, started with three spades. If Judi has a singleton spade than if Lorne plays the ♠ A he will have exactly one spade loser, regardless of the spade Judi holds. If both players follow small to the first spade trick than Lorne can lead up towards the ♠ Q and simply cover the spade Colin plays. And if Judi started with the singleton king as on this layout, Lorne will still hold his spade losers to one.
Playing the ♠ A at trick two will always work except in the unlikely occasions when spades are 4-0 or when Judi has three spades. Plays of this type are known as safety plays. They occasionally may give up a trick but they give you a better chance of making the contract.
Subscribe to our feed
Bridge-related
Is there a case for winning AC and leading a S to the 9 to allow for all four spades with East? If W wins 9S cheaply finesse Queen next round. I know KJ or K10 with West is twice as likely as spade void but on the other hand there has been a fair amount of bidding from E-W.
Yes I think the spades could be 4-0 in this auction and Colin has very few high cards if he doesn’t have the SK but wouldn’t have valued the SK very much offensively.
Also if Judy has the SK and the CKQ she has a pretty good 3C bid.
And putting in the S9 would have worked on this hand too. But as you point out it would lose to KJ or K10 with West.
Good point! It is certainly close between the two plays considering the bidding.