Hand of the Week #106 (Solution) ♠

Counting our losers it would appear as if this slam is doomed. We have 1 potential loser in spades (albeit we expect the finesse to work there), no losers in hearts or diamonds, and seemingly 2 inescapable losers in clubs. East’s lead of the ♣Q is almost certainly a singleton which means that West has a 6 card club suit headed by ♣K10 so we cannot make our ♣J which would reduce our club losers to 1. The only chance we have is if we can give an opponent the lead at the right time and they have to lead something that allows us to either make the ♣J (if West led a club for us) or allows us to trump in one hand and discard a club in the other (a ruff and discard). If we think about East’s shape we know they have 6 spades from the bidding, and we also know they have only 1 club based on their lead. This means that they have exactly 6 cards in the red suits. Once we have drawn trumps, it is therefore possible that we could get to a situation where East is on lead and can only lead spades or diamonds after we have no spades or diamonds in either hand, thus giving us that all-important ruff and discard. This would go as follows:

So, win the ♣A in hand and draw trumps in 3 rounds, noticing that East had 3 cards in hearts. This means that their shape was almost certainly 6-3-3-1. Now we cash 3 rounds of diamonds making sure to finish at the North hand. Next we take the spade finesse, so play a low spade to the ♠Q which wins (incredibly likely to win based on East’s 2♠ opener) and cash the ♠A on the table. Now comes the clever bit: we play dummy’s last spade and we don’t ruff it in hand. Instead we discard a small club from hand, allowing East to beat dummy’s ♠5. This looks crazy at first glance, but actually is very cunning. We have discarded a club loser and lost a spade trick in its place, which is neither here nor there, but importantly we have just relinquished the lead to East. Given the timing of this clever play you can see that East now only has spades left in their hand. We have played 1 round of clubs, 3 rounds of hearts, 3 rounds of diamonds and this is the 3rd round of spades. After losing the spade to East our hands are as follows:

♠ –
♥ Q10
♦ –
♣ 8

♠ –
♥ 9
♦ –
♣ J7

As you can see, as long as East leads a spade or a diamond we can ruff with the ♥9 and discard the ♣8 from hand in the same trick. This is the ruff and discard that we were after to make our contract!

Even if East’s shape was not exactly 6-3-3-1 this play would likely still work. All that we need for this endplay to function is for East to have 6 spades including the ♠K, 1 club and 1-3 hearts. That way we can draw the trumps in 2 or 3 rounds, clear the diamonds from our hands and then relinquish the lead to East at the correct moment. A very shaky 6♥ contract made with careful card play.