Declarer Cardplay Technique: There and Back Again
This is one of my favorite declarer play techniques, and I don’t know if anyone’s named it. It’s certainly well known, but if you haven’t seen it before, it’s kind of hard to spot! I personally call it There and Back Again. Any Tolkien fans out there?
You land in 4S. Plan the play. Avid bridge readers will know that South is usually the declarer. Well, It’s north here. Deal with it.
Also, this was a real deal in the Bridge Brawl. I’m south, and I held a true yarborough. Wowza!
I like to count winners at every contract. Ideally though, you should count both winners and losers.
On this deal, you have 3 red losers. The goal is to take 10 black winners. Clearly, we will need spades 3-2, else we have an unavoidable trump loser. What about clubs?
When both suits break 3-2, you can play all the top trumps and then all the top clubs.
If clubs are 3-2, you will have 10 tricks naturally. What if clubs are 4-1 though? If you didn’t consider this, I urge you to pause here and try planning the hand once more.
Are you still stuck? Let me try giving you a suggestion. Let’s say EW take their 3 red tricks (doesn’t matter). Now come two round of trumps. Both follow. Now try two rounds of clubs…
- What if both players follow to 2 rounds of clubs?
- What if one defender ruffs the second club?
- What if one defender shows out but does not ruff the second club?
1 - What if both players follow to 2 rounds of clubs?
In scenario 1, you drew two rounds of trump (finding them 3-2) and played two rounds of clubs (also finding them 3-2). Hooray! Everything broke! Now go back and finish drawing trumps, then finish playing clubs. This is why I call this technique There and back again. We played two rounds of trumps, then went over there (clubs) to test the suit. When the suit breaks, we go back again to finish drawing trumps. We take 5 spades and 5 clubs.
Now let’s see what happens if one defender ruffs the second round of clubs when clubs were 4-1.
2 - What if one defender ruffs the second club?
Bad news! East has ruffed the 3rd club. We are down 1. But wait...
Are you thinking, “So what? We’re down already.” Yes, we lost 3 red tricks and a defensive ruff. But how exactly were you going to deal with your 4th round club loser? Remember, they broke badly in order for a defender to be able to ruff the second round. It doesn’t matter if you draw a 3rd trump before playing clubs. You will just lose the 4th round of clubs instead. This is 9 tricks (5 spades, 4 clubs.)
But look at this! When they ruff the 2nd club, you don’t actually lose a trick! In return, you will ruff the 4th round of clubs. This establishes your clubs for 9 total tricks - 5 spades, a club ruff, 3 clubs. You actually broke even. You can lose a ruff or you can lose a club.
And now, finally, scenario 3…
3 - What if one defender shows out but does not ruff the second club?
Then we get to ruff the clubs good! In the diagram above, you play a 4th round of clubs as West follows suit. Now you play a red suit to get to your hand, draw the final trump, and cash the 5th club. You score 5 spades, 1 ruff, 4 clubs.
If you total up the three scenarios…
- When both suits broke 3-2, you went there and back again. This line breaks even with the “naive” line of playing all the spades and all the clubs.
- When clubs broke badly, you still broke even for -1. You traded a defensive ruff for an offensive ruff.
- When clubs broke badly BUT the defender with short clubs did not have more than 2 trumps, we make the contract when the “naive” line fails.
So There and back again breaks even with the naive line in most cases, and is pure upside in one specific case!
This is a recurring theme about managing trumps in trump contracts. Often, the defender that scores a ruff is the long hand in trumps, and the trick may come back.
I showed this hand to a student, and he berated himself for not seeing obvious things like this. This is the only time I will tell someone they are straight up wrong. This is not obvious! Bridge is a very hard game, and things only eventually become obvious (at least, I hope so. I’m still waiting for that moment) when we learn it and experience it a lot.