9th February – Board 4: Game All. Dealer West.
Some hands make potentially fascinating problems even though the scenario imagined never actually happened, and that is the case with the hand shown below. So I want you to imagine you are in 4S from the North hand on the lead of the six of hearts.
 |
West
|
North
|
East
|
South
|
1H
|
1S
|
2H
|
No
|
No
|
3D
|
No
|
3S
|
No
|
4S
|
End
|
Suppose you ruff the opening lead and try a top spade. West will win and play another heart and although you can ruff that and draw all the remaining trumps you can be denied a club trick as you will have run out of trumps, so that when West wins the club ace he can continue by playing hearts with declarer powerless to ruff. Declarer will make four spades and five diamonds but that is all. Now suppose declarer leads a low club to the king at trick two. Again West will continue hearts which declarer will ruff to lead trumps. West wins and punches again with a heart, ruffed by declarer who can draw only one more round of trumps – because he has run out! The nine in dummy is a master but dummy has no entries and West will ultimately be able to ruff a diamond and cash a heart.
The only way to make this - I think – is to play the queen of clubs at trick two. If West wins and play proceeds as above, declarer can enter dummy with the club king to pull the last trump, and if West ducks the club then declarer reverts to drawing trumps but will now make four trumps, five diamonds and a club.
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