Trump Management

Both Vul
IMPs
Dealer: South
Lead: K

	maarten Q 5 10 4 2 9 2 A 8 7 5 3 2
delikara A K 3 6 K Q 10 7 5 4 J 9 6		altay 9 8 4 2 A 9 5 3 J 8 6 3 4
	Maestro J 10 7 6 K Q J 8 7 A K Q 10

West 2 Pass

North 2 Pass

East 3 Pass

South 1 4

 

Today provides a fine lesson in hand evaluation followed by some equally exceptional declarer play.

Gee hears his partner raise his hearts and the opponents bid and raise diamonds. He correctly upgrades his already excellent hand and jumps to game.

A club lead, or even a club shift at trick 2, will put the contract down 1, but West understandably leads the SK and shifts to diamonds. Gee wins the DA and starts trump, discovering the 4-1 break as East ducks the first two rounds.

From here the naive play of continuing trump succeeds, as it often does. The opponents cash their spade trick or not as they choose, tap declarer once in diamonds, and concede the rest. This line succeeds unless clubs are 4-0 or East began with exactly 2 spades.

In fact the losing line is quite difficult to see, but not to expert eyes. Gee makes the key play of leading a spade after the second round of trump. West wins and continues diamonds. Now it becomes a question of how many to go down. Discarding a black suit winner from his hand would hold it to one, but Gee elects for maximum collateral damage: he ruffs and continues trump. East wins the HA, taps Gee out with a third round of diamonds, ruffs in on the second round of clubs and plays his last diamond. West, however, sluffed two diamonds on the trumps, so what should have been down 4 turns out to be only down 2. One can sympathize with West. Who knew?