I don’t tend to blow my own trumpet in this column, preferring to focus on my errors — as a friend of mine said, “Experts do not make mistakes — and if they do, they are interesting mistakes” — but here is a deal I got right for a change.
My partner’s redouble retransferred to hearts after I had denied a fit. East took three diamonds and switched to a club. West won with the king and cashed the spade ace before getting out with a club. I won in dummy, crossed in hearts and ruffed a spade next. My idea was to use my entries to reduce dummy’s trumps in case hearts were 4-1, and it paid off here.
Another heart to hand revealed the bad split, and I ruffed a further spade in dummy. Having reached trump parity with West, I could reenter my hand with the club ace to lead a plain card through West, picking up his heart jack.
It was necessary to shorten dummy’s trumps in order to achieve the desired ending for the trump coup, but the timing would have needed to be a little different if West had thrown two clubs on the diamonds. Then, I would have been unable to enter my hand with a club late in the day, so I would instead have won the club shift in hand to ruff a spade immediately.
A heart to hand would have been followed by another spade ruff and a heart back, followed by a plain-suit winner from hand in the three-card end position. This line is perfectly safe, since West can hardly have six spades, and a diamond ruff will always stand up if trumps break.