Monday, February 4, 2013

Squeeze wanted

As an intermediate player, I set goals to meet. As in consistently doing something that I find hard to do.

My last goal was to find and bid slams, especially grand slams. So, it was cool, therefore, when we managed to bid and make two grand slams in the course of a 8-board robot tournament on BBO.

The first was 7D found in the teeth of aggressive competition:
and the other was a slow march towards 7S after North opened 1S and I bid 2C:
It was not completely rosy. We missed this cold small slam on the final board:
We would have found it, I think, if I had bid 3S instead of 4H. Still 2 of 3 slams is not bad. 

Time to set the next skill-based goal. My next goal is to find a squeeze at the table. I know how squeezes work ... but as far as I know, I've never successfully executed a squeeze.

I had high hopes on this deal (yes, I miscounted my points and opened 2NT -- the things one does to a robot partner!):
West leads a spade. I took the King and led back a heart. West took his ace and led back another heart. I took my winners in hearts and spades. And the end-position when the last heart was led from dummy was:
.
Vul: None
Dlr: South
N
North
♠
—
♥
—
♦
Kx
♣
xxx
.
W
West
♠
x
♥
—
♦
Jx
♣
Jxx
E
East
♠
—
♥
—
♦
Qxx
♣
Qxx
.
S
Me
♠
—
♥
—
♦
A10x
♣
AK10
.
East throws a club and West throws a spade.  It is declarer who is squeezed. The only chance now seems to be to finesse the 10 and hope East started with QJ. If East splits his QJ, then I can go back to dummy with King of diamonds and repeat club finesse. That doesn't work here with the honors split.

Oh, well. I'm sure a squeeze will come one of these days. I'll keep looking.

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2 comments:

  1. Memphis MOJOFebruary 4, 2013 at 2:41 PM

    I miscounted my points and opened 2NT

    You can do about anything and the robots rarely frown at you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownFebruary 4, 2013 at 11:47 PM

    You do have squeeze chances on the last board ... but you have to have cashed the CAK before going to run dummy's winners.

    In the end position, after, say, four hearts, two top clubs, and three of the four spades -- where you have lost only the HA, everyone is down to four cards. North's are the last spade, both diamonds, and C9; yours are DAT7 and a club. You play the spade and discard your club. On your really lucky days, someone had to protect against both the C9 and the DT. In practice, all you need to do is look to see of the CQJ have been played. Assuming "no", you just play three rounds of diamonds and see if DT happens to stand up.

    You'll get there. Just envisage the end position and do what you can to simplify the end position by cashing winners. Good luck.

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