This is an instructional hand to remind players not to give up. All expert will solve it easily. But I would guess that most club players struggle.
- West leads a club, and the ♣Q holds the trick. Personally, I am no longer convinced that those positive leads under queens and kings are good in the long run. Of course, they might establish a trick which is otherwise discarded, maybe even two. Two often, they just give away a trick to declarer. In this hand, it does not matter, because clubs can be discarded on the spades anyway, as the cards lay.
- There is not much in terms of trick counting here. You have to draw trumps. The only chance is to play low towards ♥A. To your surprise, West drops the ♥K.
- Consequently, East has ♥JT9 now, which cannot be finessed. You lose two more tricks, don't you? But this is pairs, and we want to get every overtrick we can for a top score. Now is your chance to think about this problem!
- You solved it, of course! Your only chance to not lose two trump tricks is when East plays a low trump into the finesse. He (or she, as always) would have to if you play a low trump to him and he has only ♥JT left.
- The first plan is to collect all tricks, after driving out the ♦A, and trump the last spade on the table when there is nothing but the three trumps on the table, then play a low trump.
- Check, if this line of play might actually endanger the contract! What can happen? Well, East might be able to ruff any diamond. This can easily happen in diamonds. In fact it is very likely to happen. How can we prevent this, or at least make it less likely?
- We need to ruff the last diamond at the table, not the last spade. Thus, we discard a diamond on the spades first, before cashing the diamonds. Good.
- But can it cost a trick? No, that is no problem. If East ruffs, he gets another trump trick, and we still make the contract, as if we hadn't followed the plan above.
♠ - ♥ - ♦ - ♣
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High there! Looking forward to hear from you.