Put yourself in East’s seat, covering up the South and West hands, and see if you can spot where your critical play comes up. Jeff Meckstroth features again in this deal from the 2025 USBC Senior Trials. Among many other deals, this one helped the Wolfson team along to a decisive victory, allowing them to play as USA1 in Denmark last summer, where they won gold.
Michael Kamil opened two diamonds in third seat. This propelled his opponents, Doug Doub and Adam Wildavsky, to the Moysian (4-3) fit of four hearts.
Doub went up with the ace on Kamil’s club lead, fearing a singleton. Declarer then ran the heart queen successfully, followed by the heart jack. What do you think his plan was next? I am sure I would have been waiting for the next lead to come from dummy, but Meckstroth made the remarkable play of covering the heart jack with the king, giving declarer no trump loser!
Amazingly, this was the only way to defeat the game. Had East played low, declarer could have played on clubs to knock out the king. The defense would have had to force dummy in diamonds, whereupon declarer could have run clubs through East, who had no defense.
By sacrificing his heart king, Meckstroth gave declarer an unsolvable problem. He won the club and tapped dummy in diamonds. He was now in position to ruff the fourth club in front of declarer and lead another diamond. That established his heart eight to take the setting trick. Bravo.