Defense

I may have mentioned this before, but one my my favorite bridge quotes comes from Kelsey:

The average defender operates in a fog of uncertainty... His blunders are mainly due to faulty logic, failure to count and failure to draw simple inferences.  Experts also slip up quite frequently in defense, but in their case the cause is usually a lapse in concentration.  A high level of sustained vigilance is needed in order to defend without error.  - Killing Defense at Bridge, 1966

When I'm playing well, defense is an area of my game that I'd like to think I can take pride in.  Of course, as Kelsey says, it's much easier to err as a defender than declarer, so I don't shine as often as I'd like.  Obviously this is a symptom of the defender's relative lack of information, which necessitates a keener perception of logical inferences.  This problem is compounded by the ability of declarer to more readily take advantage of defensive missteps rather than vice versa.

Knowledge of common positions is an essential tool to any aspiring defender.  When one can fall back on the crux of common motifs rather than think strenuously about the situation they have that much more energy available to exert when necessary.

A hand:



This problem was posed to me by my friend Phil Clayton, who, it seems, has recently undertaken the task of improving my defense.  The position is obviously a squeeze.  Specifically, a triple squeeze.  Love defines this position as: The Repeating Squeeze: Case I, wherein the hand laying opposite the initial squeeze card holds one threat.  The situation is dismissed as trivial by Love, who points out that, if sitting under the single threat, one merely unguards that suit to destroy any further squeeze due to the position of the threat suits over declarer's menaces.  In the problem hand a heart pitch costs you one trick but saves you another as declarer's hand is squeezed before yours on the run of the hearts.

It's worthwhile to note that the Case I can repeat if the squeezee lies over the single threat.

This is definitely a situation where it pays to be familiar with the layout.  The problem could be solved without prior knowledge of repeating squeezes, but why waste the effort?