From 4th June, 2008, Board 10 Theme The Only Chance Difficulty * * * Dlr South Both Vul Hands Rotated for Convenience
Against your 4♥ contract, West finds the unwelcome lead of the Q♠. Now it looks as if you must lose two Spades and two Aces for down one. What is the miracle layout which will allow you to make this contract? And how do you take advantage of that layout?
SOLUTION
Clearly it will be necessary for one defender to hold one or two Spades only, along with both the missing Aces. Does it matter which defender is short in Spades? Yes, it has to be West, we need the A♦ in front of the King. We also need to guess whether West has led a singleton or a doubleton … if we guess wrong that it is doubleton and duck the opening lead, East can overtake and give West a ruff … if we guess singleton we’ll win the first round but if we are wrong we will have failed to sever the enemy communications. It’s far from obvious which to choose, let’s say we guess doubleton and are right! So we duck the first Spade, and win the second.
Now what? Surely the plan is to leave trumps alone (that A♥ entry will be needed later) and play on Clubs. Later (after trumps are out of the way) we’ll lead towards the K♦ and West, with nothing left but minor cards will be forced to give us the 10th trick. So, we lead the K♣ at Trick Two, and let’s suppose that this holds. Now we play the Q♣ (not a low one), and this fetches the Jack from East and the Ace from West. Now, the best that West can do is to exit a Heart, after which we ruff a Club, draw trumps and lead a Diamond. This is the full deal:
Keys to Success - Visualizing the only layout which allows the contract to be made - Ducking the first Spade (but that part was just a good guess!) - Playing on Clubs before cashing the A♥
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