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My First Compound Squeeze

by David Stevenson

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I was South on this hand

WestNorthEast South
   1C
P1SP2NT
P3D (a)P3NT (b)
PPP 
(a) Tell me about your majors
(b) Denies 3Ss and 4Hs

S KQ864
H A53
D J7
C Q74
[ ]
S A9
H Q6
D A82
C AKJ985

First trick, playing 4th highest leads from an honour, 2nd from small cards (standard British):

H4 H3 HJ HQ

Now make 13 tricks. Of course we should be in 6C but first I play hands to the best of my ability, and only then do I whinge about the bidding!

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You have 12 tricks, obviously 13 if Ss break 3-3. It seems 13 needs a squeeze otherwise. If Hs are 6-2 or 7-1 you have a menace there but no-one bid Hs and the lead has to be a false card - very unlikely. A 7-1 break in Ds means you have a possible S/D squeeze but it also means that a player has not bid with 7Ds and 4Ss! This all seems very poor odds. You have a positional simple squeeze against West only if she has DKQ and 4Ss, a bit more likely.

About 50 years ago I read a book by Clyde E Love called Bridge Squeezes Complete and it simplified Double Squeezes for me. I have never seen any other classification that works so well. I have explained the classification here.

However a double squeeze here was unlikely because it needed only one person guarding Ds, or only one guarding Hs, very unlikely as explained above.

But the real interest in the book was on Compound Squeezes. In a Compound Squeeze you have two B menaces, that is a menace accompanied by an entry against both opponents. In this case that would be the H5 and D8. You also have to have a single menace sitting over the opponent threatened. Suppose West had 4Ss then this is the case. You also need one menace in one hand, two in the other, ok.

In my 50 years I have never done a Compound Squeeze deliberately and successfully. There were a couple of hands which afterwards I did think I may have done one by accident. So when I saw this dummy ...

This was a Type L restricted Compound Squeeze. It requires the suit with no menaces (the ‘free’ suit) to be South (Cs) and requires North to have an entry in either Ss or Ds (SQ) and South to have an entry in either Hs or Ss (SA). Excellent! So now I cash 5 rounds of Cs discarding D7 and S4 from dummy and West is triple squeezed. Her last 7 cards must include 4Ss so she cannot keep 2 cards in both red suits. But now I have to decide which red suit she has abandoned.

S KQ86
H A5
D J
C --
[ ]
S A9
H 6
D A82
C 5

If she has abandoned Ds then I cash 3 rounds of Ss discarding a D, D to the A, C, West has to discard a H, discard S from dummy and East is squeezed in the reds.

If she has abandoned Hs then H to the A, S to the ace, C, West has to discard a D, discard S from dummy, SQ, SK and East is squeezed in the reds.

In fact West had followed to 1C and discarded H2, H8, D4 and HT so I decided she had abandoned Hs so followed the second line for 13 tricks.

The E/W hands were

S J752
H KT842
D K64
C 6
[ ] S T3
H J97
D QT953
C T32

The classification of Compound Squeezes (slightly amended and improved from Love) is here.

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Editor's note:

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