Test Your Play

Clearly you need to try to arrange a trump coup, which means ruffing twice in dummy and ending in your hand at trick 11 with dummy holding the ♠A 10. Equally clear is that East has the ♥A given the lead and West’s spade holding.

Cash the ♦A, ruff a diamond and lead a heart. If East ducks, he loses the ♥A as you can discard a heart on the ♦K and wind up losing a spade trick. Period.

Say that East goes up with the ♥A and returns a heart (as good as a diamond or a club). Win the ♥K, ruff a diamond, and get back to your hand with a club. (To make this, you must find West with at least two clubs.)

Dummy remains with the ♠A 10 and the ♣K Q. You remain with the ♥Q, the ♦K and the ♣A 6. Play your red-suit winners, discarding clubs, and wind up with the last two tricks. If West ruffs a red winner, overruff, cash the ♠A and take the last two tricks with clubs.

Thanks to Mircea Giurgeu of Petersburg ON and Dave Longstaff of Waterloo ON for this one.

TStart by going up with the ♠A. The ♠K may drop from East, and even if doesn’t, you will remain with a low trump in dummy to ruff a club. If you duck, East may win and return a spade, and you’ll be in trouble.

The idea is to set up a long trick in one of the red suits for a club discard while ruffing your other club. The play should go like this assuming you arbitrarily decide to set up dummy’s fifth heart:♠A (assume East follows low), ♦A, heart ruff, ♥A, heart ruff, ♣A, heart ruff. If West overruffs, having led low from K–x (the actual lead when this deal was played) and three hearts, you can still get rid of both clubs via a club ruff and the fifth heart.

If the third heart ruff lives, ruff a club and discard your last club on the fifth heart, losing just one trick to the ♠K.

Notice that if you duck the spade at trick one, you cannot make the contract if West led from K–x–x, even if West has four hearts and a friendly 3=4=3=3 pattern because West will ruff the established heart low and still have the trump king. You need West to have an even friendlier 3=4=4=2 pattern with the ♣K x! Sure.

Thanks to Jon Shuster, Gainesville FL.