From                   4th April, 2007, Board 4

                                          Theme                Trump Control

                                          Difficulty            * * *

                                          Dlr North           None Vul

West leads a low Heart, and when Dummy goes down you see that your side did well to play this one in the 5-2 Spades rather than No Trump.  Of course, Diamonds makes 11 or 12 tricks, but you can outscore that contract if only you can retain trump control.  If Spades are 3-3 there won’t be a problem, the challenge is to overcome a 4-2 break.

A Heart has to be lost and it might as well be lost immediately, so you duck East’s J♥.  Then comes the surprising (but effective) switch to the K♣, squashing your Queen and knocking out Dummy’s Ace.

That switch has made life difficult, a Heart continuation or a trump switch would have been a more gentle defense.  What’s your plan?

SOLUTION

One possibility is to take Dummy’s Heart ruff immediately, cash A♠, ruff a Club to get back to our hand, then draw two more rounds of trumps.  The A♦ still has to be lost, so this line requires 3-3 trumps, surely we can do better than that.

OK, how about taking the Heart ruff immediately, but then playing on Diamonds?  No, East will no doubt win the Ace, and send back a Heart.  This will promote a trump if East started with 4 of them, and also if he started with a singleton A♦ and 2 or 3 trumps.

The best line appears to be to play on Diamonds at Trick Three.  East wins the A♦, but can do no damage as this is the full deal:

Keys to Success

   - Ducking the Heart at Trick One to facilitate the Heart ruff on the board

   - Playing on Diamonds early, before taking the Heart ruff