Dealer North

♠ AQ7

♥ AKQJ

♦ QJ10987

♣ –

♠ KJ1086

♥ 5432

♦ 

♣ KQJ10

compass

♠ 95432

♥ 

♦ 65432

♣ 432

 

♠ –

♥ 109876

AK

 A98765

 

Dealer North     East West Vulnerable

 

 

Lead  ♣K

Contract 7

 

Jack’s bridge columns can be found at the back of Saturday’s magazine section of the Yorkshire Post.

 

SOLUTION TO PROBLEM – How to play 7 HEARTS:

  1. On ♣K lead, throw ♦7 from dummy (1st KEY PLAY) and win ♣A. It is important to keep ♠Q and ♠7 intact in dummy as you need to trump both of them in hand to reduce declarer’s trump holding to three hearts.
  2. Play ♥6 to dummy’s ♥J
  3. Play ♠A from dummy throwing ♦K
  4. Play ♠Q from dummy, trumping in hand with ♥7
  5. Play ♥8 to dummy’s ♥Q
  6. Play ♠7 from dummy trumping in hand with ♥9
  7. Play ♥10 from hand to dummy’s ♥K
  8. Declarer now has no trumps left in hand (trumped two spades and drawn three rounds of trumps).
  9. Draw the last trump by playing ♥A from dummy and …….

10.2nd KEY PLAY – declarer’s hand has no trumps left so DISCARD ♦A

11.Now with trumps drawn and diamonds unblocked, dummy’s ♦QJ1098 are all winners!

12.Well played.

 

The key was to be able to discard ♦AK to unblock the suit. One honour (♦K) goes on dummy’s ♠A and the other (♦A) goes on dummy’s long trump (♥A).

To enable this declarer must trump two losing spades in hand to make sure dummy had one more trump than declarer.