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Crossing Their Signals
Defenders help each other by exchanging count and attitude and suit preference signals, and a canny Declarer can confuse things by clever false-carding with the spot cards, making it difficult for the defense to determine what is a high spot and what is a low spot. For example, if LHO's opening lead is the Ace of a side-suit, and RHO plays the discouraging Three, then, if Declarer would like that suit to be continued, he will withhold the Two and play a higher spot, leaving the opening leader in doubt as to the meaning of his Partner's Three.
Related Play Problems
South’s 3♥ looks eminently reasonable, but it could go for a whopping 1100 on perfect defense. In this case, the definition of perfect defense is to keep leading Diamonds (or ♠A and shift to Diamonds). If that happens then Declarer can do no better than to score 5 trump tricks. But, West may err by cashing the ♠A and then shifting to a Club. This reduces the damage to 800. And West can further assist our distressed Declarer by returning a Club … now West is ruffing one of Declarer’s Club losers with his trump winner and the penalty is suddenly down to 500 (and a good board for N-S).
But we don’t expect any of that to happen, surely West will insist on playing 4♠. North leads a Heart to South’s Ace, and no doubt West will false-card with the Queen, trying to create the illusion that North started with ♥95. But South has no reason to fall for that malarkey, all the more so when there is nothing to be gained by leading up to Dummy’s intimidating minor suits. So, North gets her ruff, and a natural trump trick as well, holding Declarer to 10 tricks.
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