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Deal of the Week (Sep 12, 2008) Click here for Archives
Problem:

West   North   East   South
                                 2♠
all pass

In a match against expert opponents, your 2♠ preempt buys the contract. West leads the ♣9, his doubleton suit, and strikes gold as East takes the ace-king and returns a club for West to ruff. West now returns a diamond to dummy's ace. What now?

Solution:
You have lost the first three tricks, and have the two major suit aces to lose as well. You have to hope for spades to be 3-3, and for the A to be onside. That is not all, though. Say you lead a spade to the jack and West's ace. West will lock you in dummy by playing a diamond, leaving you to choose your own poison; you can lead a heart away from the king (East knows enough about the hand to rise with the Q), or you can lead a club and inflict a trump promotion against yourself!

You can avoid this scenario by cashing the other diamond honor before leading a trump to the jack. You do have one final hurdle to cross though - when West leads a heart, you should rise with the king (you have no reason to change your plan of playing West to hold the A; furthermore, holding the Q, there is no reason for West to lead a heart; he will simply play a diamond and wait for his side to score two heart tricks).

 4
 K8763
 AK
 QJ653
 A107 Deal  983
 A95  Q102
 Q9874  10653
 94  AK7
 KQJ652
 J4
 J2
 1082

The maneuver of cashing the K before leading a spade is an extension of the dentist's coup, since you are extracting a card from dummy that otherwise would have allowed West to find a play that would benefit him.

Analysis:
At the point where the problem was posed, Bridge Baron's double dummy solver confirms that cashing the other diamond honor is necessary before playing a spade. The double dummy solver points out that the hand can be defeated - which is outlined in the next section.

Bridge Baron's Line of Play
Bridge Baron performs incredibly well on this deal - it finds the winning line of play with incredible ease. More significantly, when Bridge Baron is made to defend the hand, it finds the ♣9 lead from the West hand (a club lead is required to beat the contract). It wins the ♣K at trick one in the East chair, and makes the beautiful and counterintuitive return of a trump, which is again the only move to beat the contract. This play has the effect of removing dummy's trump, so that declarer does not have a chance to perform the Dentist's Coup maneuver. West captures declarer's ♠J with the ♠A, and plays a club to East's ace and scores a club ruff after all, and then plays a diamond to lock the lead in dummy, subjected declarer to the familiar dilemma of having to choose between leading a heart from the wrong hand or inflicting a trump promotion upon himself.
Par Contract Analysis:
The par contract on this deal, where both sides are vulnerable, is 2 by East-West.

Bridge Baron deal No : N1283-96557-00386-57427-29254-85777

You can download this deal in PPL format, and view it with Bridge Baron here :
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