Boye Brogeland of Norway, for the Rosenthal team, was the hero of today’s deal from the 2024 Transnationals.
Christian Bakke’s rebid was game-forcing with four spades and long diamonds, after which Brogeland placed the contract in five diamonds. (Four diamonds would have been encouraging here.)
Michal Klukowski, West, led a trump to protect his spade tricks. This was likely to be safe since the diamond ace and king were surely in dummy. The lead prompted an immediate decision from Brogeland. It seemed natural to call for the diamond ace, but then how would he deal with dummy’s spade losers? He could lead a low spade in the hope that East would fly in from something like K-10-x-x, in which case West’s queen would subsequently drop, but East was unlikely to fall for this approach, having deduced (based on dummy) that the defense needed three major-suit tricks.
Brogeland wanted to take the trick in hand so he could lead spades; if West held exactly K-Q or honor-10-x, finessing the jack would allow him to develop the suit effectively. So, he played a low trump from dummy and took the opening lead with his 10. Klukowski split his spade honors at trick two, but Brogeland was equal to the task.
He won with the spade ace and continued with the jack. If East won and had no more trumps to play, great. Failing that, the contract would still come home if the spade 10 fell. West won with his king and continued trumps, but the fall of the spade 10 meant declarer had his game. A fine piece of declarer play from the Norwegian champion.