Defensive Twist

Club competition
Oktober 7, 2003

	10 9 4 A J 9 8 5 3 2 7 5 4
K 6 3 10 7 6 9 8 7 6 5 K 8		8 7 2 K Q 4 2 K Q 4 2 6 3
Lead: 3	A Q J 5 - A 10 3 A Q J 10 9 2

West - Pass Pass Pass Pass Pass

North - 1 2 3 4

East Pass Pass Pass Pass Pass

South 1 1 3 * 3NT Pass

3 was 4th suit forcing.

Of course 5 is a safer contract and even 6 has chances, but this will probably not outscore a 4 contract. (Although in practice 5 would also have been good enough for a 100% score as noone reached a game contract.)

The line of play I took led to a happy ending... at least for me. However, keep a close eye on the defense and see if you could have done a better job.

I won the spade lead in dummy and immediately took the club finesse losing to the king in west. Nothing could hurt me now. I won the diamond return, ruffed a diamond, cashed the ace of hearts for a diamond discard, and crossed to the ace of spades (naturally rejecting any chance of an overtrick). Now I just continued high clubs losing only two more spades.

The friendly lead and the 2-2/3-3 division in the black suits make this contract look very easy. Yet there is an interesting twist in the deal which would have made the deal a whole lot harder. Do you see it? I have to confess that I probably would have gone down...

when west ducks the club king smoothly! If the club queen holds, I will probably continue with the spade ace, diamond ace, diamond ruff, heart ace for a diamond discard... and another club finesse. However, this time the roof falls in. West wins and forces declarer with a heart or a diamond. The declarer now loses trump control and has to work hard to keep the down tricks to a minimum.