End play?

hi jilly... you probably already know this, but an endplay doesn't *have* to come at or even near the end of a hand... sometimes there are even 2 or 3 endplays in the same hand... anyway, the most obvious and recognizable endplays do involve stripping (elimination plays) the hand, but that's just an ends to a means... you're trying to avoid what luis termed the phantom endplay (you're trying to exhaust the one to be thrown in of exit cards, or to leave him with only those cards that give up a trick if led)

at a suit contract, an endplay doesn't have to have as its aim the forcing of an opponent to lead into a tenace.. you can arrange the play so that a ruff/sluff is an option also.. say you have, in hearts, Qxxx in dummy and Jxx in your hand.. you don't want to lead this suit at all, you much prefer the the opps lead it.. so you try to arrange the play so that both you and dummy have trumps left AND the opponent thrown in has to either lead hearts or lead a suit you can trump in either hand, so you can toss a heart from one hand while ruffing in the other

more often tho, you're trying to get the opps to lead into a tenace of yours.. sometimes you have a 2 way finesse and don't want to guess, something like A,J,x in one hand and K,10,x in the other.. hope this helped

For the sake of no one EVER taking me seriously ever again will try and answer this post with the SARCASM and the TONGUE-IN-CHEEK check-boxes unticked....

END PLAY

An end play, normally invoked towards the end of the hand, is a strategy used by declarer (even by the defence if s/he is able to count declarer out and somehow is not declaring her/himself

) in order to force a particular defender, or either defender, to be on lead and force a return that can benefit declarer.

In some cases, the end play requires some preparation of stripping opponents of exit cards to force them to open a particular suit (and thus becomes categorised as an elimination play) [and create a scenario as illustrated by flame and lukewarm above] OR

you recognise that a particular opponent has to protect certain cards and can be thrown in to lead a suit that will be disadvantageous to the defence (and thus becomes categorised as a squeeze play) OR

you force a particular defender to win a trick and ANY return by him/her yet again benefits declarer. This normally requires declarer and dummy to have a majority of the face cards and tenace holdings in all possible exits by a defender. (and thus becomes categorised as a Geez why did my p leave me ONLY in 3NT hand)

The last one is sometimes instantly recognizable and sometimes is engineered unknowingly by declarer

. The first two more often require some grease-work: declarer has recognised that an end play can be engineered and plays his/her cards accordingly...

FOR THE EXAMPLE FETISHISTS

I was recently kibbing a hand where declarer engineered this end play. Cant remember exact cards but the principle is there.

Contract : 5 ♥

LHO had overcalled ♦

DUMMY

♠AQxx
♥AQxxx
♦xxx
♣T

DECLARER

♠xx
♥KJxxx
♦Kxx
♣Axx

How and why they got to 5 ♥ is not worthy of discussion - declarer just had to justify his bidding

. Declarer can see he can lose 3♦ if RHO can get in an lead a ♦ through or he is forced to play ♦ for himself. He also intuits that the ♠ finesse MUST be right for the contract to make.

SEQUENCE OF PLAYS

♣ lead, taken by A;
♣ ruff;
returned to hand with a ♥;
Took ♠ finesse of Q which held;
Cashed A♠;
ruffed ♠ ( noting J ♠ by RHO);
ruffed ♣;
Drew last ♥;
exited with ♠, RHO discarding a ♣, and declarer discarding one his small ♦s;

(note: declarer does NOT ruff this. If he did so he will be locked in hand, exactly what he wanted to avoid and why he took this line right from the start. He is sacrificing the lead to ensure that LHO wins and S/HE is on lead and forced to play ♦ or give a ruff-and-slough)

LHO on lead with K ♠ was forced to play ♦

last 4 cards being on

♠-
♥x
♦xxx
♣-

♠-
♥xx
♦Kx
♣-

LHOs hand was

♠KT93
♥x
♦AQTxx
♣KQx

For the sake of completion and at the risk of being plagiaristic of me ol' buddy lukewarm

, the tenace holding example is an old chestnut with regards to end play technique.

EXPLOITING TENACE POSITIONS

Holding A J 9 opposite T x x in a suit, there is a possibilty of losing 2 tricks in the suit if the person behind the A J 9 holds the K Q combination. Of course, if either of these honour cards are held in the other hand then there is the chance of the finesse ensuring that only one trick MAY be lost.

But a person aware of end play technique would recognize that one existed and would do his damndest to reach a position where he can limit his loses to 1, HOWSOEVER the honour cards were distributed.

So, as an extremely simplified example, let us say that we had the following ending:-

♠-
♥x
♦AJ9
♣-

Spoiler

♠-

Spoiler

♥x

Spoiler

♦KQx

Spoiler

♣-

♠-
♥A
♦Txx
♣-

IF one would to take the ♦ finesse at this juncture, the RHO will win and exit with a ♥ forcing you to take the finesse again and losing, and you may be left pondering how unfortunate you were that BOTH honours were offside.

The CORRECT technique is to cash the A♥ first and THEN play small ♦ to dummy covering whatever card LHO played. The difference now is only that RHO has been exhausted of cards other than ♣s and is forced to play back into the tenace holding on the table.

Note: it does not matter whether LHO has either or both of these cards as he just covers whatever card s/he plays. With both honours with LHO, he is forced to win on the table and concede a trick but he has restricted his losses to 1 BY FORCE.

End play is about recognition and practice allows you to identify these situations easily after a while and to exploit them. It is very satisfying when you play a hand correct technically and taken a 100% line in a contract.

END PLAY DEFENCE

There is a brilliant discussion in T Reese's book 'Expert Game' about strategies defenders can adopt to avoid being end played. In this particular example, (for the more alert readers

) LHO could have avoided the endplay had s/he jettisoned his/her K T 9 ♠ so that dummy would have the boss spade and thus cannot be end played. In this particular case, alas, it would not have worked as dummy's ♠ would have furnished him with his much-desired ♦ discard ,losing just 2 ♦.

However, end play defence can involve throwing or 'unblocking' unnecessary high cards in order to avoid such a position. Expert defenders can visualise the end game and can see that if s/he can discard appropriately, s/he can prevent her/himself from getting the lead either at all or at the undesired time, either to allow his/her partner to get in to lead a suit from the right side or force declarer to play a suit for himself.

A classic case is the following

DUMMY, in front of you, has

♦AKTxx

and you have

♦Qxx

Let's say you have a holding in another suit where you want p to get in and lead through, and you make the assumption that this is perhaps the ONLY way to get the contract off i.e playing p for J x x ♦. If you have the chance, a good tactic may be to flamboyantly discard your Q of ♦ on a discard, playing your p for the hoped-for J x x ♦. Notice that declarer can never set up the ♦ without letting partner in.

Otherwise, entries allowing, declarer can play up to the AK ♦ (twice if necessary, ducking if on either occasion you play the Q in order to prevent your p getting in. (this is categorised as an avoidance play)

Some may argue that if p has got J x and declarer xxx, say, you have just allowed declarer the luxury of 5 tricks in ♦. This is fallacious in the sense that, assuming there is no other way to get contract off and declarer knows what he is doing he can always force the situation where he loses the lead to you in order to protect his holding in a vulnerable suit. Of course, if you misread the situation and p has an ace somewhere you have a lot of explaining to do when the 5 ♦ tricks is the only way he can make his contract

Hope that helped Jilly Bean

PS Hee hee. For the more gender-conscious of you, although the defenders may have been male or female by my use of multiple pronouns, the declarer is inadvertently exclusively male

and i ain't going to edit this to be politically correct.