Thursday, January 30, 2014

Get the kids off the street before the coup

I was South in a club game when I got to a 6H contract:


I got the lead of the Queen of spades. I took the Ace. Then, I played a low heart to the King, drawing the queen from West.  Looks like hearts 4-1.  How do you play?

I have A-10-8 over the J-9 with righty.  Two finesses will do him in. But unfortunately, I will then have 2 spade losers because dummy's clubs are needed to throw away two diamonds.  I decided that I would take one heart finesse, ruff one spade and then hope to play diamonds for one loser and effect a trump coup to take care of East's hearts.

To effect a trump coup, I need to shorten my trumps to have the same length as East. How can I do that? If you click "Next" above, you will see the right line to take. Essentially, I need take a heart finesse, and then cash the Ace of diamonds. Go to dummy's clubs and and throw away the *diamonds* so that you can ruff a diamond.  Ruffing a diamond is the way to shorten my trump length and then the trump coup is on.  All thirteen tricks are mine!

At the table, though, I didn't see the right line. Instead, I played the queen of diamonds on trick 3. East covered and I played the Ace and another diamond to West's Jack.  But now, the defense slipped -- it turned out that West really had only 5 spades, not six and so he had 3 diamonds, not two. My play looked like I had two diamonds and so West shifted to a spade that I ruffed, and I was able to make 6H.

Probably not a terrible board, but I needed to do the trump coup right.


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