Today’s deal is from an online game run by Bernard Magee, a popular British teacher and cruise organizer.
Magee’s trump lead against four hearts floated around to declarer’s ace. What now?
If declarer can bring the trumps in without loss, he should be able to scramble home, but West might have led a sneaky jack from queen-jack doubleton. East’s black-suit bidding forebodes a bad diamond split, so declarer does his best to try to ruff away the opponents’ diamonds. Declarer does not mind East overruffing once, which would resolve his trump guess, but conceding two overruffs would be fatal.
Jim Mason, an old friend and bridge partner, led a spade at trick two. He was not so much trying to score the king as to cut defensive communications. East took the king with the ace and would have done well to fire back a trump, forcing declarer into a nasty guess, but in fact he returned a spade.
After ruffing, Mason correctly turned to his side suit, but he made the slight error of leading the diamond queen. Magee accurately played low, dooming the contract. East later ruffed away dummy’s diamond ace and was poised to overruff if declarer ruffed another diamond in dummy. Mason was left with two diamond losers in addition to the spade and a ruff.
Say declarer leads a diamond to the ace and another diamond. If East ruffs, he does so on thin air. If he discards, declarer’s diamond queen forces the king, and he can then ruff a low diamond in dummy. East has one trump trick and no more.