Puzzle 7F13 (1994) by Richard Pavlicek
Puzzle 7F13 (1994) by Richard Pavlicek
doubled after West leads the 
A.
6 x by South
 |  Q 4 3 2 K 10 5 4 3 2 4 3 2 — | |
| — A Q J 9 8 7 6 K J 10 9 8 7 — | ![[W - E]](t.gif) | J 10 9 8 7 6 5 — — 8 7 6 5 4 3 |
| Lead: A | A K — A Q 6 5 A K Q J 10 9 2 |
| West 1 5 Pass | North Pass Pass Pass | East 1 5 Dbl | South 5 6 All Pass |
Assume East discards a spade and you ruff the opening lead. After drawing all of East’s trumps (six rounds!) it looks like your best chance is to get West in some kind of endplay in the diamond suit.
No dice. Since you cannot reach dummy, West needs only to cling to his diamonds — he must get two diamond tricks despite the endplay — and the contract will fail. If only you could get to dummy.
Wait a second! Perhaps you could force East to win the sixth round of trumps, then he would be obliged to lead a spade to put you in dummy. Is that enough tricks? No. The dummy will have only two winners (the Q and K) so you will still be left with a diamond loser. Darn!
Solution Q is won in dummy. He will be squeezed and forced to surrender another trick for your contract.
For the record the play goes: Ruff the A with the 9 (you must retain the two) and cash your five top trumps, discarding three hearts and two diamonds from dummy. Next unblock the A-K and lead the 2 (discard a spade from dummy) as East must win. The forced spade return is won by dummy’s queen as West is squeezed. If you can’t see this on paper it may help to lay out a deck of cards.
A lead. And here is the really bizarre: East must ruff his partner’s A at trick one. Declarer can overruff, of course, but he cannot execute the squeeze play. The reason is that he will have an extra trump left in his hand if he attempts to throw East on lead; this relaxes the pressure against West, and he can retain both of his stoppers in the ending.Is there a moral here? Good grief, I hope not.
Copyright © 1994 Richard Pavlicek. All rights reserved.