Play Hard, Play Well! -Trump Break (August 2006)

Dlr: N	A Q 8 6 3
Vul: None	10
IMPs	Q J 2
	A Q 7 4
	2
	A Q 8 6 4 2
	K 5 3
	10 5 2

Contract: 4 by S

Opening Lead: 9

My first thought upon seeing dummy was "My partner has all her bids. Hmm... This doesn't look like a good contact, what does that mean about my bid? I guess I overbid, again... " OK, on to the play! We need to count our losers. We will certainly lose the A and at least one . If hearts are 3-3 with the K onside we will lose only one heart trick, otherwise we will lose at least 2 heart tricks. Thus, we need to hold our black suit losers to either one or zero, respectively. There are two ways that we might approach the black suits. We certainly will take the spade finesse, but then we will have to decide whether to try to ruff out the spade suit (giving us discards for our clubs) or to just take the club finesse. Ideally, we would like to combine these two lines of play, but that may depend on the defense and how the heart suit turns out. (note: it is possible to find Kxx of spades offside, then the spade finesse would be wrong, but this less likely.) 1: 9, Q, A, 3      (0/1) 2: 10, 5, 6, J      (1/1) So it looks like the diamonds are breaking, with LHO having 9876 and RHO having A104. (Though this isn't certain, it appears that way from our opponents carding.) Now we need to play on hearts and find out how many losers we have. We play the 10 immediately. We can decide if he are going to run it, or play to the queen in a moment, but by playing the heart immediately, we put pressure on RHO. Today, right hand opponent has done us a favor and covered the ten with the Jack. 3: 10, J Q, 3           (2/1) 4: A, 7, 3, 5  (3/1) (Note: If the ten had not been covered we would have likely played to the Queen, hoping to see the 7 or higher from RHO then we could play the 8 making a safety play against a 5-1 hearts break. Though certainly our opponents made things simpler by covering the 10.) Now that the heart suit has not broken (5-1, ouch!), we must play for both the spade and club finesse to work. We cannot establish the spade suit for club discards because of the bad heart break. 5: 2, 4, Q, 5              (4/1) 6: A, 10, 2, 7   (5/1) 7: 2, 4, K, 8              (6/1) Playing the diamond now is crucial. If we ruff a spade a trick seven RHO might be out of spades and have a chance to discard his last diamond. Then RHO could score his little trump by ruffing our K. 8: 5, 3, Q, 6      (7/1) Now it is safe to ruff a spade because RHO has 3 and either 2 or 1/1. 9:  3, 9, 2, J      (8/1) 10: 10, 9, A, J           (9/1) That leaves us with the lead in dummy (holding 3 small black cards) and this end position.          (dummy) - - -                K97           864 At trick 11 we will produce another trump trick via a trump coup. If RHO ruffs small we win the trick by overruffing and if he ruffs high, we underruff and he is end played, having to give us one of the last two tricks. 4 = +620. A great result from a bad contract!                A Q 8 6 3                10                Q J 2                A Q 7 4 K J 7 4               10 9 5 3                        K J 9 7 5 9 8 7 6               A 10 4 K 9 8 3              J 6                2                A Q 8 6 4 2                K 5 3                10 5 2