Ruff and Sluff
by Foxymoron

My neighbour's dog has coronavirus. He was very wheezy today, and I asked him how he was feeling and he said "Ruff!" Time to change the subject, methinks. Slough is an interesting word. Apart from being one of the few words that can change its pronunciation when it has a capital letter, it also has different meanings without a capital letter, and different pronunciations. Slough, pronounced sluff, is the term for shedding skin, as snakes do, To complicate matters, slough meaning wet swampy ground, can be pronounced slow (rhyming with cow) or sloo (rhyming with loo). I am getting a bit bogged down in more ways than one, so back to the bridge.

We were all taught as beginners not to concede a ruff and discard, a ruff and sluff, which uses the meaning of slough "to cast off", but the winning defence on a hand from the EBU SIMs pairs today was to do so twice!

It generally pays to go to the three-level at match points and I was quite happy to compete to 3H here. I must admit I would have gone on to three spades as either West or East, but they gave in. West cashed the top two spades, East showing an odd number, and made the normal switch to the jack of clubs. I put in the queen, more in hope than expectation, and East won.

Now the winning defence is to concede a ruff and discard by playing a third spade. Say South ruffs and leads the king of hearts. Now, as Stefanie pointed out at the time (and Sally did in the booklet to be fair), West can win and concede a second ruff and discard by playing a fourth spade. East will uppercut with the nine of hearts and declarer is beaten. Finding this defence would be worth around 70% of the matchpoints and would be well-deserved. If you are greedy and want 100% then you have to double first and then find it!

This leads me on to slough, pronounced sluff. In addition to shedding skin, some snakes also squeeze their prey, and such an opportunity presented itself on the following hand. But the timing must be right. The python moves incredibly fast in crushing a rodent before the latter can get its teeth into the python's neck.

North opened 2NT in our room. We play this as 23-24, so that when we open 2C it is either 20-22 or 25+. This seems to work quite well and we have had a few successes playing in 3 of a minor after the former. I decided to bid 3C, 5-card stayman, and then 3NT on the South hand. I could have shown four spades, but with around 30.5 points, computer simulations suggest that no-trumps usually makes the same number of tricks. On this occasion it did not matter and East led a spade to the ten and ace. Stefanie  played a club to the queen which held, although that was no guarantee of the ace being onside. She now sensibly cashed three rounds of hearts to see where she stood in that suit and they broke. Now, fatally, she cashed the fourth heart which squeezed dummy in an unusual way, and she only made 11 tricks, still worth about 70% strangely. The line for 12 tricks was to lead the ten of clubs now. Say East wins and exits with a club. Now you win the king of clubs, cash one top diamond, and the ace of spades say, and only now play the last heart in the four-card ending. East must pitch a diamond and now you pitch a spade from dummy, and cross to the queen of spades, squeezing West in clubs and diamonds. A non-simultaneous double squeeze. Of course, if you are self-kibitzing, you would bid and make 6NT, to make sure of your top.