You find yourself in a contract of 6S, in a 7-4 fit! LHO is kind enough to lead a club. How will you plan your play to maximize your chances of winning?
Will you ruff in hand and discard a diamond (or heart) in dummy, or will you discard a diamond (or heart) from hand and ruff in dummy?
Solution :
You ruff in dummy, and smile at LHO as you discard a diamond from your hand. Without thinking twice, you pull out the pesky trumps your opponents are holding. Then, you relax, and play one heart after the other, awaiting the ace to come, so that you can claim the rest.
Alas, RHO ducks the first two hearts, and blocks you out of dummy. Another heart will be disaster, as there is definitely one more diamond loser to manage (once you win the ace). What do you do?
To make this contract, on the first trick, declarer has to ruff in both hands! After over-ruffing (!) in hand, pull out the remaining trumps, and play two rounds of hearts. This is how the hand will look (with declarer to play from dummy) -
Play the Jack of Diamonds from dummy.(a) If East covers with the queen, play the ace and play back a diamond.
(b) If East doesn't cover with the queen, let West win the king, and keep attacking diamonds (whatever west plays, you can reach into dummy again!)
Looking at the problem double-dummy, this does appear to be the best solution, but I am still not convinced that this forms a reliable line of play with East and West hands concealed. Any comments?
2 comments:
The above line is better line of play.
If u discard a D from hand on first round, draw trumps and play on Hearts, then opps will duck for 2 rounds. Now if u play a Heart, u are surely going down as one more Diamond trick has to be given later. So ur only hope is endplaying West by playing Diamond Jack and ducking it to him. But as it turns out, there is no endplay if declarer discards a Diamond on first round because he is left with singleton Diamond and singleton Hear in hand with no access to dummy.
So by not discarding a Diamond initially, declarer keeps the option of endplay available.
Also, ruff and sluff on first card doesnt help because u need two discards. If Heart Ace is dblton, then u r home. If Heart Ace is 3 carder, hope that it is with West or hope that both Diamond K and Q are with East and Heart Ace with West.
So, there are lots of extra chances in this line. The most important points is that u need to discards from Diamond suit to make the contract. So, initial ruff and sluff is not enough and if Hearts behave (H A dblton) contract always make.
Also, ruff in both hands (and not D discard from dummy) is needed because, u need dummy's 4th D to discard the H in hand assuming Hs don't behave.
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