BRIDGE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2021

West dealer. Neither side vulnerable.

Assume you’re in four hearts and West leads the K-A-Q of spades, East discarding the 7-5 of diamonds on the second and third spades. You ruff, expecting to cash your 10 highcard tricks and move on to the next deal. But when you play the A-K of trump, East shows out, and complications suddenly arise.

You still have those same 10 tricks – five hearts, four clubs and a diamond – but how can you possibly cash them? If you draw

West’s two remaining trumps and play the A-K-Q of clubs, how do you get back to your hand to cash the jack of clubs?

And if instead you stop drawing trump at this juncture and try to cash the A-K-Q of clubs first, West is virtually certain to ruff one of them to defeat you. West has already shown up with five spades and four hearts and can hardly have three clubs also, which would mean East started with eight diamonds.

The problem seems insoluble, and yet the answer is there if you examine all the evidence. The fact is that West passed as dealer with the A-K-Q-J-9 of spades and therefore cannot have the king of diamonds.

So, acting on this deduction, you continue with the Q-J of trump and discard the ace of dia

monds from dummy! Next you cash dummy’s A-K-Q of clubs and then lead the eight of diamonds toward your Q-2.

Regardless of what East does or has done to this point, he cannot stop you from scoring two more tricks with the queen of diamonds and jack of clubs, and you are back to making the 10 tricks you started with.