From                   14th June, 2006, Board 25 

                                          Difficulty            * *

                                          Dlr North            E-W Vul

East leads the J♦.

Your flimsy reverse has persuaded Partner that you belong in slam, and you appear to have your work cut out to make 12 tricks.  It looks as if you must get the Clubs going, and the obvious approach is to pitch one Club on a Diamond, win the Ace, lose one, and ruff out the suit, hoping for a 3-2 break.  If all goes according to plan you can score 2 Spades, 4 trumps plus one ruff, 2 Diamonds, and 3 Clubs, for a total of 12.

Are there any snags?

SOLUTION

Well, yes, just a couple!  Suppose that we win the A♦, draw trumps in 3 rounds, play K♦ pitching a Club, and then lose a Club.  That's not good enough, they'll make us ruff a Diamond, and now we have no trump left on the board with which to ruff out the Clubs.  No, we must draw trumps, lose a Club, win the return, then cash K♦ pitching a Club, cash A♣, ruff a Club.

As can be seen, correct timing brings home the contract whenever Clubs and Hearts both break 3-2.  But suppose that Clubs are 4-1 ... does the contract still have chances?  Yes, we could get the bad news in Clubs, and revert to the Spade finesse (also hoping that the suit is 4-3).  However, when we get to the point of losing that Club, East might win the trick and shoot back a Spade, taking away the finesse option before we know whether or not the Clubs are breaking.  Is there a way to get West win the Club trick whenever the suit is 4-1?  There's no sure-fire method that we can see but we'd guess to make that first Club lead from the board, forcing West to split from KQ65.
 

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