Insert
yourself in the South position and plan the
play in 4
on the lead of the challenging lead of the
Q
from West after the auction in the bidding
diagram.
Both vulnerable; North deals
West |
North |
East |
South |
|
1NT |
Pass |
4 |
Pass |
Pass |
Pass |
|
Opening Lead:
Q
The spade lead will force you to discard a spade on the ace of diamonds
before the defenders gain the lead twice. If
you win the
K
and play two rounds of trumps immediately
and the defenders cannot arrange a ruff, you
will lose only one trump trick when the suit
is three-two and East holds the king (ace,
then low towards the queen, playing it
unless the king appears) or when West has
the doubleton king and you find the
inspiration to play for it (ace, then low
from both hands). If you have only one trump
loser, you can afford two club losers.
If you have three trump losers, you can't
make 4, so the only other relevant cases
arise when you have two trump losers. In
these situations, you will have to lose only
one club trick to get home, and your chances
to achieve this will be much greater if you
can lead the suit twice from dummy. If you
can't arrange to do this, you will need the
queen singleton or doubleton in East. Note
that you might get home by playing on clubs
even if you run into a club ruff because the
ruff will often be with a natural trump
trick.
One of the many sound reasons to delay
drawing trumps is that entries may be
limited and there may be a better chance for
the contract by using a vital trump entry to
play a side suit rather than to continue
trumps.
Here the winning line is to win the
K,
cross to the A, and lead the
J, passing it
if East plays low. As the cards lie,
declarer can play either a club or a trump
at this point and still get home. If East
rises on the first club, declarer will
finesse for the queen later.
Kraft: Is it just lucky that playing clubs
before trumps makes the contract?
Kokish: Not so, there are more winning
combinations that flow from this sequence
plays. In fact, when the hand was played in
the 1999 Canadian Teams Championships, the
East/West cards were distributed differently.
When declarer won the
K and crossed to the
A, East played the king. If trumps were
indeed four-one, West had two natural tricks.
Declarer was essentially forced into the "clubs
before trumps" line, which worked.
Kraft: That seems straightforward when we
examine the deal at leisure, but in the heat
of battle, more than one capable declarer
had a blind spot at the table and played a
second trump before turning to clubs. Well,
that would have been right if East had found
the brilliant play of the king of hearts
from king-and-one, with a club holding of
two small. What a story that would have
made.
The four hands were: