From                   31st October, 2007, Board 1                  

                                          Difficulty            * * *

                                          Dlr North           E-W Vul

West leads the Diamond Five won by Declarer’s Ace.

If you can pick up the trump suit there are 12 easy tricks, via 5 Spades, 3 Hearts, a Diamond and 3 Clubs.  That’s fine, but not everyone is a perfect guesser, how will you make 12 tricks when there is a trump loser?

SOLUTION

This is a rather complicated hand, and we suspect that the best line goes as follows:

            Win the A♦

            Immediate Spade finesse of the Jack, losing to the Queen

            Win the Spade return in hand (East following)

            Cash the AK♣ and ruff a Club

            Cross to the A♥ and run the trumps.

The Club ruff gave us our 11^th trick, and the 12^th could come from a number of sources:

-         The Q♣ might drop on the 3^rd round

-         Hearts might be 3-3

-         Either player might be caught in a squeeze if they hold 4 Hearts and the Q♣.

Additionally, of course, the suggested line is likely to succeed when the Spade finesse wins.  Here is the full hand:

On the actual hand, if we follow the recommended line of play, the trump finesse will lose.  Then, when we ruff the third round of Clubs, the Queen does not obligingly fall.  And, as can be seen the Hearts to not break 3-3.  Fortunately, the 4^th string in our bow, the Heart-Club squeeze materializes against East.

Post Script

Another line of play is to go after two Club ruffs in Dummy.  The resulting possibilities are numerous, but it is a line of play which is likely to fail when trumps are 4-1, and our instincts tell us that the earlier line is superior.  Our resident statistician is on vacation, but if there are any probability experts in the audience we look forward to hearing from them!

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