Delicate

Hi all,

House of Cards – Season 4: Complete. Must see: Affirmative. Counting down to April 24th now for Game of Thrones – Season 6.

Here’s a nice deal from an evening at HOK. At my table both declarer and defence botched things up, but during the post mortem we spotted a delicate beauty to it. South gets to declare 4 after West crowded the auction by preempting in .

West leads a top and switches to .

Plan A:

Declarer wins in dummy and plays a trump to the King. The Queen of gets ruffed in dummy and another trump to the Ten. Declarer crosses to dummy in to play dummy’s final trump. Leaving:

When the 8 is played from dummy East will rise and play the 9, tapping declarer. 

Result: Failure.

Plan B:

Declarer wins the in dummy and plays a trump to the King. Next he crosses to dummy in to play another trump towards the Ten. Again declarer can cross in to play a 3rd round of trumps. Leaving:

When the 3rd round of trumps is played from dummy East rises with the Ace and fires back the Jack of trumps. Leaving declarer with four inescapable losers.

Result: Failure.

Plan C:

Declarer wins the switch in dummy and continues with the other top and exits a to East. East might try the forcing game by switching back to which declarer ruffs in dummy. Now it is time to tackle trumps by playing one to the King, cross in and another trump to the Ten. Leaving:

On track declarer cashes a top in hand before crossing to dummy in .  The thirteenth now neutralises East. If East decides to postpone the inevitable by discarding a , South can discard his last . Coup complete.

Result: Success.

As long as declarer sets up a winner in dummy declarer can always get to 10 tricks.