Column 7E17 (3-27-83) by Richard Pavlicek

Forced Discards Solve Problem

A lively auction ensued after South opened one spade. West made a skimpy takeout double, and North raised to three spades as a preemptive measure. East bid four hearts, South bid four spades, and this was passed around to East who doubled for penalty. West, having so little defensive strength and a void in spades, opted to remove the double to five hearts (obviously an excellent decision). This came around to South who persisted to five spades, passed out.

5 by South

E-W Vul	Q 9 6 5 4 3 10 6 3 A 9 8 2
— J 7 6 5 K 9 7 5 4 K Q 7 6		10 2 A Q 9 8 2 Q 2 J 10 5 4
Lead: 5	A K J 8 7 4 3 K 10 A J 8 3

West Dbl Pass 5 All Pass

North Pass 3 Pass Pass

East Pass 4 Dbl Pass

South 1 4 Pass 5

West led a heart; East won the ace and continued with the queen to South’s king. The problem, of course, was to avoid the loss of two diamond tricks.

One possibility was to attempt to “strip the hand” by ruffing out the clubs, eventually finessing a diamond into West and hoping to force West to return a diamond. Declarer wisely rejected this plan — with West almost surely void in spades, there were insufficient entries to dummy to ruff out the clubs and return to dummy to lead a diamond.

Declarer embarked on a different plan: He led out six rounds of trumps. This was too much for West. Having no definite clue as to the actual distribution, West finally discarded down to two diamonds and three clubs, after which it was an easy matter for declarer to concede a diamond to establish his last diamond.

Notice that declarer could always make the hand by guessing the diamond situation, even if West keeps three diamonds. But leading the trumps increased his chances and eliminated the need to guess.

Bringing home this contract was worth 11 IMPs since the identical contract was defeated at the other table. That declarer tried the aforementioned strip procedure and, when it fizzled, tried leading a diamond to the eight.