From                  14th November, 2007, Board 6

                                          Theme                Forcing Defense

                                          Difficulty            * * *

                                          Dlr South           N-S Vul
 

North’s Double showed 3-card Spade support.  West’s cue-bid of 2♠ showed 4-card Diamond support.

West leads the A♦, and a second Diamond to East’s Jack, which you ruff.

The hands fit together well, and if Spades are 3-2 this contract should make without too much difficulty.  But there seems to be a good chance that South has 4 trumps for her Double, in which case trump control will be an issue.

What’s your plan?

SOLUTION

If trumps are 4-1, one line that will not work is to play on trumps, hoping to run the Clubs afterwards, West’s 4^th trump will foil that plan.  Nor will it do to set up the Hearts, even if that suit is 3-3, repeated Diamond leads will fatally weaken our trump holding.

Well, two can play the forcing game.  The solution is to run Clubs at them, weakening their trumps.  But we don’t want East ruffing a Club with his singleton trump, so the solution is to draw just one round of trumps.  At Trick Three, we run the Spade Jack (West does best not to release her Ace).  That holds, and now we can run the Clubs, pitching Hearts, until West ruffs.  This is the full deal:

	♠ KT3 ♥ 76 ♦ 52 ♣ AQJ843
♠ AQ87 ♥ Q2 ♦ AT64 ♣ T97	North    West         East            South	♠ 2 ♥ KJ43 ♦ KQJ983 ♣ 65
	♠ J9654 ♥ AT985 ♦ 7 ♣ K2

Here is the end position after West ruffs the 4^th round of Clubs:

                                    North

                                    ♠ KT

                                    ♥ 76

                                    ♦

                                    ♣ 84

            West                                        East

            ♠ AQ                                       ♠

            ♥ Q2                                       ♥ KJ4

            ♦ T6                                        ♦ Q83

            ♣                                            ♣

                                    South

                                    ♠ 965

                                    ♥ AT9

                                    ♦

                                    ♣

Now, if West gets out with a Diamond, we ruff in Dummy, pitching a Heart, and lead another Club, eventually losing 3 Spades and a Diamond (all of Declarer’s Hearts go away).  If, instead, West shifts to a Heart, Declarer must duck one round, after which he has an answer to any defense.