The Play's the Thing 
by Willie Zurfluh

THE SIMPLE SQUEEZE

Inexperienced Bridge players are mystified by squeezes. Some even think that they do not really exist at all. They think that there must have been a way to defeat the contract if only they had discarded properly.

But squeezes do exist and they should be a part of every duplicate players arsenal. Clyde Love in his classic book on squeezes used the code word BLUE to indicate if a squeeze was present. B stood for Busy. A defender must be protecting two or more suits. L stands for Losers. You must correct the timing, or count, in order to have a squeeze. In other words if you have nine tricks and want to squeeze for ten, you must have lost three tricks. U stands for Upper hand. At least one threat card must be in the hand opposite the squeeze card. E stands for Entry. You must have entries to the established threat cards. The legendary George Durgin, who taught me squeeze play some thirty years ago, liked to use the code word STEM. In order to have a Squeeze you need Timing, Entry and Menace.

I have selected a hand from Love's book to illustrate the simple squeeze in operation. You are playing in a strong field and reach the contract of 6NT with the nine of spades lead. Almost all of the pairs will get to a slam. You have a sound opening bid facing twenty high card points. But, you might get a good score if you take all of the tricks.

Off the top you can take 1 spade, 3 hearts, 5 diamonds and 3 clubs. The count is automatically corrected if you have to take all the tricks, so L is present. Our threat cards will be the long heart and the ten of spades and the squeeze card will be the long diamond, so U is present. E is present because the ten of spades is in the hand with the squeeze card and there is an entry in the heart suit. All we need now is B, one defender with the top spades and the long hearts.

So, what do we do. We win the opening lead, cash the top clubs and run the diamonds. On the last diamond we discard a spade, an idle card. Our right hand opponent is helpless. He must part with either his top spades or his long heart and we make an overtrick.

A word of advice that Gerry Hartsman gave me when I first started playing Bridge, was that you did not have to know the first thing about squeezes. In case of doubt just cash your winners. You might fall into a squeeze or the opponents might misdefend. That, in general, is worth remembering. If you give your opponents a chance to make a mistake, it is surprising how often they will, even good players.