From               7th June, 2006, Board 14

                                          Difficulty         * * * *

                                          Dlr East          None Vul

They lead a Heart, which you ruff in your hand.  A Spade to the Ace, on which LHO shows out.  Obviously, the other side can make their 5♥, so all you have to do here is to scrape up 9 tricks … down two will be a great board … down three will be a disaster.  How do you achieve greatness?

SOLUTION

To achieve the good result of down only 2, we must assume that Diamonds are 3-2.  And we must further manage to hold our Club losers to just one.  One possibility is to finesse our T♣, playing RHO for the Jack.  Another approach would be to lead up towards Dummy’s Queen, hoping that the King is on our left.  Which play is better?  Well, yes, of course, it was a trick question, neither of these plays is optimal.

At first glance, it looks as if we have a lock on 9 tricks, via an elimination play … ruff the opening Heart lead, draw trumps, ruff another Heart, and exit in Diamonds.  Eventually, they will be forced either to break open the Clubs for our 9^th trick, or to give us a ruff and sluff, allowing us to pitch a Club and hold our losers in that suit to just one.  But, follow the play, and you will see that, with trumps 3-0, this line of play does not work … ruff the Heart, 3 rounds of trumps, ruff another Heart, exit a Diamond.  Now, we'll run out of trumps before the Diamonds set up.

Does that mean we should revert to a Club guess after all?  Well, we may have to eventually, but we can give ourselves some extra chances if, after getting the 3-0 trump news, we draw only two rounds of trump.  Ruff the opening lead, Spade to the Ace, ruff a Heart, cash a Spade, and exit a Diamond.  This is the full deal:

East can win the first Diamond and can get out safely with a trump, but West must win the all-important third round of Diamonds, at which point he will be end-played.  Nor does it help the defense to play a forcing game by leading more Hearts, as Dummy can handle the ruffs while Clubs get pitched away from Declarer's hand. 

Of course, if it is East who has the third Diamond, the defense can arrange to cash the three Diamonds immediately, allowing East to exit safely with a trump.  Now, we will have to break open the Clubs ... Plan A would be to finesse the Ten, succeeding whenever East has the Jack, and also end-playing West when he has the King as well as the Jack ... Plan B would be to play East to have started with 3-5-3-2 distribution, in which case we can cash the A♣ and lead a Club towards the Queen, succeeding whenever we have guessed the distribution correctly, and even when we have misguessed, provided that the K♣ is with West.  There's not a lot to choose between these plans, so take your pick.

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