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The Key Aim.

Several declarers in an Open tournament failed in today’s contract, perhaps because they did not recognise their “key aim” as declarer (other than to make their contract!). Do you?

 

Your opening is on the light side and you are soon driven to game by your partner. There’s no helpful lead from West who starts with 10 . What’s your plan and what do you not want to happen?

Any thoughts you might have of ruffing clubs in dummy have surely vanished with the trump lead. With West favourite to hold A, you would probably need 3 ruffs…and you would be lucky to get more than one.

So, it’s all eyes on that diamond suit in dummy. One passing thought is you would really appreciate a friendly trump break. You have enough potential losers outside trumps.

So, win the trump lead in hand and play your diamond to dummy and ruff a diamond in your hand. Down comes Q from West. A second trump goes to dummy (yes, a 3-2 break) and you play J. East plays 9 . And you? You  discard one of those club losers.

You do not care whether West wins with K, or ruffs. In fact, neither happens.

 

The key is to keep East off lead. West’s overcall has told you where the A should be. If it is not, then you do really have problems.

At the table, West can only discard a spade. You ruff the next diamond, draw trump (it’s important you do that next even though you now have no trumps left in either hand) and play a spade. If West plays low, you can win and discard two more clubs on dummy’s two remaining high diamonds and then play a spade to make an overtrick. The same result occurs if West takes their A first of all.

An initial spade lead (presumably A and a second spade) makes life harder in that potentially East can gain the lead with a spade ruff (not on the actual distribution as long as you play diamonds as above…and 2 rounds of trumps at an early stage) but as long as there is a small trump in dummy, the defence can only take one club trick.

So, plan to keep East off lead and recognise where the A should be and you should certainly make 10 tricks, if not 11. Friendly trump breaks also do occur, sometimes!

Richard Solomon

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