Problem

The Auction:

South’s opening bid was 1♦. North responded with 1♥. South bid 2♣ and North 2♠ (4th Suit Forcing to Game). South bid 2NT, North raised to 3NT. South asked for aces and after North responded 5♥ – South declared 6♣

West has led the ♥4.

Can you help South – how to find a way to 12 tricks?

Contract:6♣ by South

Vulnerable: North/South

Solution

Although it is tempting to play a small heart from dummy and hope that West has underled the king and thus your ♥Q may win the trick, it is too dangerous. You cannot risk losing the first trick, as you miss the ♠A too.

You take the first trick with dummy’s ♥A (trick 1). Now you have two vulnerable suits – hearts and spades. But you have a 9-card suit of diamonds, which offers the possibility to discard the singleton spade from dummy – after you have pulled trumps.

You play the ♦K from dummy and then the ♦J, East covers; you take the trick with the ♦A (tricks 2, 3). Your diamonds are winners now.

Next you lead the ♣K, then the ♣Q and ♣J (tricks 4, 5, 6). Now you can lead the ♦7, but you take this trick with dummy’s ♦10 – as you don’t want to be caught in dummy with no way to return (trick 7).

Then you lead the ♦2 from dummy, win the trick with your ♦8 and lead the ♦9 discarding a spade from dummy (tricks 8, 9). West discards a spade and two hearts, so does East.

The opponents have only the ♥K left. You lead the ♥Q, East wins the trick with the ♥K – so the king was offside – and leads the ♠J (trick 10).

You duck and ruff with dummy’s ♣A. You still hold one club and dummy’s hearts have been promoted to winners now, so you can lead the ♥10 from dummy ditching your ♠K and then the ♥9 (tricks 12, 13).

South and North had five tricks in diamonds, four in clubs and three in hearts. The problem was – to promote the hearts into winners, one trick had to be given up to East. If the opponents had taken a trick with the ♠A before South gained lead and thus control, the contract would go down.

But South became the declarer and West had the opening lead. West – who held the ♠AQ – didn’t want to lead away from tenace and chose hearts instead, saving South.

If 6♣ were played by North, East would have probably led a small spade and after that there would have been no way to avoid losing two tricks and going down.

Par Contract Analysis

The par contract on this deal is 4NT by South.