From the desk of Bob Jones:

SIX SQUEEZE

December 8, 2011

Hi All,

Many players feel that they will never execute a squeeze at bridge. They look at it as an advanced play that only the ‘gods’ can make. Some squeezes are quite complicated, but many are simple and elegant. You don’t have to do much more than recognize the position. Look at board 17 from Tuesday at Jourdan’s:

I played Tuesday with Harriet Glazer, who is the star of this deal. We arrived routinely in 3NT and South led a heart. Harriet played the 9 from dummy, hoping South had led from J10, and won the Jack with the Ace. She played a heart back to dummy to take the club finesse. South won the Queen and had to guess what to do next. Afraid to play away from her KS and not seeing the need to play another heart, she broke the diamond suit. After Ace of diamonds and a diamond to the King, North played a third heart. Harriet Cashed the DJ and ran 2 more clubs plus the DQ (elegantly discarding the SQ from dummy) to reach this position:

Notice the lovely collection of sixes in the dummy!

East cashes the C6 and what is South to do? If they discard the H10 the H6 in dummy is now good. If they discard the S8, declarer plays spade to the Ace, dropping the now singleton King and takes the last 2 tricks that way. The fancy discard of the SQ is not necessary for the squeeze to work. Harriet could have played the SQ to the Ace and dropped the stiff King just as easily. She discarded the SQ in order to preserve her option to take a spade finesse if she decided to play North for the King. She hadn’t decided yet who to play for theKing. South squirmed so much over their last discard that Harriet knew who had the King and had no trouble dropping it.

This hand was a lot of fun for us. Hope you enjoyed it too.

Bob