From                   11th October, 2006, Board 28

                                          Theme                Elimination Play

                                          Difficulty            * *

                                          Dlr West            N-S Vul

West leads a low Diamond.  Worst case scenario, after drawing trumps, is to finesse twice in Hearts, hoping that West has at least one of the missing Heart honors.  That's approximately a 75% shot.  What's the 100% line?

SOLUTION

This one is a sure thing via elimination play, all that is required is to ruff all the black losers before taking the Heart finesse ... in with a Heart honor, East will then be forced to return a Heart into Dummy's tenace, or else to concede a ruff and discard.  So, we win the Diamond, draw trumps (in two rounds, as it happens), ruff out the Diamonds and the Spades, ending in hand, and, now, when we take the Heart finesse, East's goose is cooked.  However, a little bit of care must be taken with Dummy's entries.  The full line:

      Win the A♦

      Cash A♣ and then K♣ (yes, in that order!)

      Ruff a Diamond high

      A♠, then K♠, and ruff a Spade

      Cross to Dummy with a Club

      Ruff a Diamond

      Finesse the Heart

Keys to Success

   - Realizing that the contract is a certainty via an elimination play

   - Taking care to win the second Club on the board (management of entries)

   - Ruffing high in hand at least once, also for entry purposes

   - After the elimination, end-playing East via the Heart finesse

Postscript

As another way to solve the entry problems, you could have also ruffed a Diamond at Trick Two, it won't get overruffed unless East started with 8 of them.  But why settle for 99.9% when you can have 100%?