Jettison Practice

This crazy hand apparently turned up in an online college tourney. Found it in a William Root book. Plan the play for maximizing your chances of success.

Hint: Think about *really* bad suit breaks.
Additional Hint: Read the heading!

South is in 7NT. West leads the jack of spades.

North:
S: A Q
H: K Q J
D: x
C: J 9 x x x x x

South:
S: K
H: A
D: A K Q T x x x x
C: A K Q

Scroll down for the solution....
















Your first instinct is to run the dice and claim. Resist it! There is a chance, albeit a small one, that the diamonds break 4-0. Note that the clubs run equally well, but the spade lead has just taken out the only entry to dummy and you can't come back once you play the top clubs from hand.

The solution is to jettison those high clubs to give yourself a chance to run the clubs before testing the dice. But even after I've said this, the play is far from obvious.

Win the lead with the ace, dropping the king of spades. Cash the queen of spades, and jettison the ace of hearts from hand. Now cash the top hearts in dummy and jettison the top three clubs from hand! Phew! Now play the jack of clubs and see if the ten drops (there are 3 clubs left, giving it a decent probability of about one-fourth). If it does, run the clubs in dummy; if it doesn't, you've lost nothing and you can test the diamonds.

In real life, the diamonds broke 4-0 and the club ten dropped singleton. Unfortunately, Root doesn't say if anyone figured out the winning line!