Bad Poetry

A simple deal with a useful lesson for advancing beginners.

Playing matchpoints, favorable vulnerability, last board of a session that seems to be going pretty well, my partner is the dealer and he opens 1 as I contemplate:

852 / KQ4 / Q93 / K753

East jumps to 2, a weak jump overcall. During the mandatory ten-second pause, I consider my intermediate point range and my double heart stopper and decide to give 2NT a try. Partner raises this to 3NT and all pass.

I get the lead of the 6 and partner comes down with:

	A 9 4 3 A 10 7 5 A J 10 8 2
	8 5 2 K Q 4 Q 9 3 K 7 5 3

W	N	E	S
	1	2	2NT
P	3NT	AP

I certainly have no problems in hearts (triple stopper!), but diamonds are weak and we have only 23 high-card points between us. Moreover, outside of clubs I have only four tricks and not much hope of developing another. So I need all five club tricks, which means I have to find the Q.

I take the A on the first trick and there’s no point putting off the club choice. What to do?

Beginners learn a little poem, “eight ever, nine never.” This classic couplet addresses the common situation where you are the declarer and you have the Ace, King, and Jack of a suit but you are looking for the Queen. Should you finesse? The meaning of the rhyme is that you should take a finesse if you have eight cards in the suit, but try to drop the Queen with nine. So, for example, if the suit were laid out like this between your hand and dummy:

A J 10 9

K 8 7 6

you would start either by playing the King and then leading to the Jack (hoping that West had the Queen), or by playing the Ace and then running the Jack around (hoping that East had the Queen). But if the suit were like this:

A J 10 9

K 8 7 6 5

then, because you have a total of nine cards in the suit, the odds favor laying down the Ace and the King and hoping the Queen drops on one of these two tricks.

That’s all very well for beginners, but the next step up is to recognize that a four-word rhyme can’t give you all the answers. You have to consider the context of the whole hand. Sometimes, the rest of the hand tells you that the odds are different.

Like, say, in this hand. Here it is again:

	A 9 4 3 A 10 7 5 A J 10 8 2
	8 5 2 K Q 4 Q 9 3 K 7 5 3

I have nine clubs, so the “eight ever, nine never” rhyme says I should play out the Ace and King. The opponents have only four clubs, so with no other information the odds are that the Q would fall on the first two rounds of clubs.

But not so fast. There is other information. Remember the bidding. East made a weak jump overcall to 2. And notice that East did this without the Ace, King, Queen, or 10 of hearts! East has to have a bare minimum of six hearts, leaving at most two for West. That leaves at least 11 spaces in West’s hand for the Q and at most 7 spaces in East’s hand. West has got to be a favorite for the Q.

So I lead a club to the King, getting the 6 from East and the 4 from West, and then when I lead a small club back toward dummy West plays the 9. It’s now or never. I play the 10, and East drops a heart.

Everything happens for the best. I get five clubs, three hearts and a spade to wrap up my contract for a cool 20 out of 23 matchpoints. Another blow against bad poetry.

The full deal was:

	A 9 4 3 A 10 7 5 A J 10 8 2
K J 10 7 6 6 5 K J 2 Q 9 4		Q J 9 8 7 3 2 A 10 8 6 4 6
	8 5 2 K Q 4 Q 9 3 K 7 5 3

[WBL Unit Game, A/X Division, 2-28-2008]