Squeeze Play (bridge) - Examples

Examples

These concepts are illustrated in Example 1:

South needs all three remaining tricks in a notrump contract. He leads the ♣A, and West is squeezed in hearts and spades. If West discards the ♥A, North's ♥K becomes a winner. If he discards either spade, North's ♠J becomes a winner.

Note the following features of this position:

This is a positional squeeze, because if West's cards are transferred to East, the squeeze fails. Now one of the menaces must be discarded before it is East's turn to play. If the ♥K is discarded, East can safely discard the ♥A. If the ♠J is discarded, East can safely discard a spade.

Squeezes often require declarer to know the location of specific high cards or the number of cards a defender holds in a particular suit, in order to know what cards the squeezee will be forced to play. Examples 2a and 2b illustrates:

Again South needs three of the remaining tricks in a notrump contract. In Example 2a the presence of the diamond loser means that when South cashes the ♣A, West is not squeezed. He can safely discard his idle ♦7. However, when South next plays the ♦3, West is squeezed again. East wins the ♦Q, but must lead to dummy's winners.

In Example 2b East's ♠3 2 are replaced by the ♣3 2 and declarer must know East's club length in order to make the correct play. If South cashes the ♣A and then leads the ♦3, East wins the ♦Q and will take the rest of the tricks. In this case, the correct play is for South to lose the ♦Q immediately, before taking the ♣A, in order to rectify the count. Now East is forced to lead a club to South's ace, and West is squeezed as before.

But with East's hand as shown in Example 2a, losing the ♦Q first does not work. East can return a spade, and declarer will score only the ♠A. Not only does the squeeze position disappear, but there is no entry to cash the ♣A.