BRIDGE

SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 2023

South dealer. Both sides vulnerable.

The bidding:

The most common form of defence against a suit contract is to force declarer to ruff at every opportunity. One advantage of this procedure is that it keeps the defenders from breaking new suits, but the primary purpose is to completely deplete declarer’s trumps, after which the defenders will be in position to cash whatever cards remain in their long suits.

When declarer has a plentiful supply of trumps, he can usually withstand this attack on his trump suit. But when he has only seven trumps divided 5-2 or 4-3, his situation often becomes precarious.

Consider this deal where South reaches four spades as shown. West leads a heart, and hearts are continued. Declarer ruffs, and if he now draws all the opposing trumps, exhausting his own trumps in the process, he goes down one, finishing with only nine tricks – five spades and four clubs. When he leads a diamond at trick 11, the defenders score the ace of diamonds and two more heart tricks.

This result should not come as any great surprise to South. The 4-2 division in the trump suit is more likely than any other, occurring nearly half the time.

To defuse this potential threat to the contract, declarer should adopt a more cautious approach. After trumping the heart at trick two, he should lead the jack of diamonds. If the jack holds the trick, he can then draw trump and romp home with 10 tricks.

If the jack of diamonds is taken by the ace and a heart is returned, South must be careful not to ruff, which would reduce him to three trumps and leave him prey to a 4-2 trump split. Instead, he discards a club or a diamond, leaving his trump holding intact. A heart continuation, if made, can then be ruffed in dummy, after which he has the rest of the tricks and his contract.