West opens 3♠
and eventually South becomes Declarer in
6♥.
West’s opening lead is the ♠K, won by Declarer’s Ace.
Declarer
can count four side-suits tricks, with a fifth available
if the ♣K is with East. That means that he will need to score
7 or 8 trump tricks if he is to make his slam. And with East
sure to be out of Spades by now, any Spade ruffs will have
to be high.
How do you propose
to make 12 tricks?
Dummy
West East
Declarer
♠ A764
♥
J9876
♦
3
♣ Q43
One possibility is to hope for
2-2 trumps and for East to have the ♣K. In that case, trumps are drawn, and
Declarer gets up to 12 with five trumps in his hand, five side-suit tricks and
two Spade ruffs on the board. What’s wrong with that plan?
This plan needs a fair amount of luck.Firstly, as West has
extreme Spade length, he is likely to have less than his share of the Hearts,
and a 2-2 Heart break is possible but unlikely. Secondly, this line requires
the ♣K with East.
Better, but still not good
enough, is to arrange for two high Spade ruffs, and to pick up trumps by
finessing against East’s Ten. That caters for the 3-1 trumps, but it’s down one
whenever the ♣K is offside.
The route to success is to ruff
three Spades high in Dummy, and to finesse against East for the ♥T. That line
of play gets you to 12 tricks without worrying about the ♣K.
Here is the full deal:
Now you merrily cross-ruff the
hand, conceding the last trick. That well-timed line of play works against most
distributions, requiring only that East has the ♥T.
That’s the key card on this deal, not the ♣K!