These days, Jeff Meckstroth lives in Florida. Having recovered from ill-health, he now generally plays with David Berkowitz. However, in this year’s Senior Trials and subsequent world championships, he successfully partnered Mike Kamil.
No doubt he would have preferred to be playing a diamond slam than his Moysian four spades in today’s deal from the Seniors bridge trials, but he handled the play with aplomb.
After winning the club lead in dummy, Meckstroth played a diamond to the king and ruffed a club on table. He then knocked out the diamond ace before winning the trump shift in dummy perforce.
At this point, if declarer had cashed the other top spade and tried to run diamonds at once, the defenders would have ruffed small and cashed a club. Playing diamonds right away would not have helped either. Meckstroth had to rid himself of his club loser first, so he played with the odds by leading a heart to the ace and then running the heart jack. Only then did he cross to dummy’s top spade, to discard a club on the heart king. All that remained was to play diamond winners — the defense could take their trump tricks at their leisure.
In the other room, declarer ran the spade nine at trick three, which did not help. He drew another round of trumps and only then gave up a diamond, but the die was cast. East won and returned a club, after which declarer was short an entry to pick up the hearts. He could have recovered if trumps had split 3-3, but there was no such luck.