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).
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| ♠ 4 | |
| ♥ K8763 | |
| ♦ AK | |
| ♣ QJ653 | |
♠ A107 |
|
♠ 983 |
♥ A95 |
♥ Q102 |
♦ Q9874 |
♦ 10653 |
♣ 94 |
♣ AK7 |
| ♠ KQJ652 |
| ♥ J4 |
| ♦ J2 |
| ♣ 1082 |
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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 :
Deal Of The Week
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