| West | North | East | South |
| 1♥ | Pass | 1NT | 4♠ |
| All Pass |
You, South, are looking at nine likely tricks, so, hoping your partner has something of value, you jump to the spade game when it’s your turn to bid. West starts with the top three hearts. How do you plan to get to 10 tricks?
Solution
West began with the three top hearts. East signaled a doubleton; declarer ruffed with dummy’s ♠9. Alas for declarer, East overruffed with the 10 and, as he could not then avoid a diamond loser, declarer was set one trick.
“That was unlucky,” offered the declarer. Dummy would have none of it. “Luck had nothing do with it. Obviously, hearts were 6-2. So, all you had to do was take the best chance for the contract: throw a diamond from dummy on the third heart. What could the defense have done after that? You’d win the next trick, draw trumps in two rounds and then ruff your losing diamond in dummy.” Dummy continued, “Ruffing the third heart with the nine of spades would succeed less than half the time, whereas my line would succeed nearly four times out of five when the trumps broke 2-1.”.
Dummy finished with, “Even if trumps had been 3-0, you would still have made the contract as long as the hand with three trumps couldn’t ruff the third round of diamonds.” The full deal: