From                   October 25th, 2006, Board 5

                                          Difficulty            * * * 

                                          Dlr North           N-S Vul

West leads the A♥, the K♥, and then the J♥, East pitching a Club on the third round.  After ruffing the third round, how do you rate your prospects?

Things look rather bleak.  We'd like to lead from the Dummy three times ... twice for trump finesses, and once towards our Q♣.  But we don't have three entries to the board, only one.  One possibility is to play the trumps from our hand ... either Ace then the Queen to catch one defender or the other with Jx ... or Ace then low trump to bring down the Kx ... if we can guess which one we can hold our trump losers to one without using up our entry (which we'll use later to play on Clubs).

Can you find a better line?

SOLUTION

 Yes, indeed you can!  before touching trumps, it can hardly be wrong to cash the high Spades, this may give them exit problems when they win their Diamond trick.  Alright, let's consider them cashed, both opponents following, with no Queen appearing.  Next how are we going to tackle the trump suit.  We want to lose the first trump trick, leaving a trump on the board for a Heart return ... and we want to lose it to West if we can, he will then be end-played.  Considering that East seems likely to have the K♦ for his 2♣ bid, we would exit with the T♦ after cashing the Spades, hoping that the Jack is with West.  If it is, we are virtually home, all returns from West are equally ruinous to the defense.

As it happens, it is East who wins the J♦, but Declarer can still come to 9 tricks as East is also end-played:

On the assumption that the K♣ is with East, this line of play works whenever East has one of the missing Diamond honors, and the suit breaks 3-2.  We make that a 54% shot, considerably better than the play of A♦ and the Q♦ (or low Diamond), which gains when there is the right doubleton honor in one of the opponents' hands, and also all singleton honors and the doubleton KJ, the sum of which is a mere 38%.

Note that it would not do to play A♦ and out a Diamond ... East wins, cashes his second Diamond winner, and exits with the J♣.  There is still a Club to be lost by Declarer, and that will be down one.

Home    Hand Analyses    Bidding Quizzes     Play Problems    System Library