From                   28th June, 2006, Board 8

                              Difficulty            * * *

                              Dealer West      None Vul

Partner leads the 9♣, and Dummy goes down with a surprisingly good hand.  Dummy plays low on the first trick, you overtake with the Ten, and Declarer wins with the King.  Declarer plays the A♦, K♦, and 2♦ on the next three tricks … Partner plays the 4, 5, 7, and Dummy pitches two Hearts.

Probably, Partner has the J♦ or T♦ ... if it's the latter we can give her an immediate trump promotion by leading a low Club.  Can we do better?

SOLUTION

Declarer presumably does not have a 4-card major on this auction, so he must have started life with 3-2-6-2 or 2-3-6-2 shape.  How about the missing high cards, namely the AK♠ and the K♥?  With two of these he would surely have rebid 2NT or 3NT, so let’s give Partner two of them instead.  Partner presumably does not have AK♠, based on her opening lead.  So, let’s give her the K♥ and a high Spade.

If we trust our logic (it’s not 100% as we are relying on Declarer to have bid as we would), then the trump promotion won’t help us … if we lead a Club, Declarer will merely pitch away a Heart loser, and we’ll score only 3 or 4 tricks (depending on whether Declarer’s high Spade is the Ace).

Instead of going for the trump promotion, it must be better to shift to the Q♥.  Declarer wins on the board, but cannot get back to hand to draw the last trump.  Whatever Declarer does next, we’ll get in with the J♥, finally give Partner her trump promotion, and there will still be a Spade to come.  Down one on this nice defense.

Some Declarers make the mistake of tipping off their hand through their play.  For example, they will win tricks cheaply when they can afford to win with a higher card, or will ostentatiously draw trumps by leading low to Dummy's Nine.  These plays simply give the defense extra information and make their job easier.  Experienced Declarers have learned to make their plays as unrevealing as possible.

With this in mind, was East being naive when he led the 2 on the third round of trumps?  This play made it quite clear to North that her Partner held the Jack or the Ten ... he could have led the 8, which would have left North in doubt about the Ten.  Well, on this occasion, perhaps East was being devilishly devious ... perhaps he wanted North to know about the Ten, so as to stampede her into a premature trump promotion!