Hand of the Week #200 (Solution) ♥

Counting up our possible losers, we have: none in spades, possibly 3 hearts, 0 diamonds and 2 clubs. We are sure to lose the 2 tricks in clubs and in fact North has led a top club at trick 1 so we are going to these tricks straight away! The heart suit is where there is some interest here. We are certain to lose to the missing ♥A and ♥K, but losing to the ♥J is possibly avoidable. If we could manipulate the heart suit such that our ♥Q ends up squashing their ♥J then we will avoid the Jack as a loser and as such reduce our hearts losers from 3 to 2, and our overall losers from 5 to 4. To do this our best chance is to finesse in hearts, hoping for South to hold the ♥J. Given our total losers, we are sure to make this 2♠ contract of course, but we might as well try to make an extra trick.  We are going to have to be a little bit careful with our entries to dummy, to give us the best chance of performing this heart finesse.

So, lose the opening club to North, and lose trick 2 as well when they continue with clubs. North’s best bet at trick 3 is to play yet another club which forces us to ruff in our hand. After which we should cash our ♠A and follow with a low spade to either of dummy’s ♠Q or ♠J, noting the kind 3-2 trump break on the way. Next, don’t draw the final round of trumps, because we have the lead in the dummy right now, so due to low entries to the table we need to try a heart finesse first, and leave 1 trump outstanding for now. Lead the ♥10 from the table, South should duck, as we should too and North is forced to win the ♥A. North now does best to not play another heart as this gives us the finesse for free, so North should play a low diamond which we should be careful to win in hand, preserving our ♦K as an entry to table for later. Play another low spade to dummy, drawing South’s last trump, and finesse in hearts once more. South does best to go up with their ♥K, but their ♥J is now stranded. Going back over to the dummy for the final time with the ♦K and leading our last heart from there sees South’s ♥J finally appear, and with it our overtrick too! We lose just ♣AK and ♥AK for 2♠+1 and +140 on our scorecard.

At first glance, the heart suit looks very ropey here, but in actuality we have a 50-50 shot of losing only 2 tricks (to the ♥AK). This is because we have all of the below intermediates, so we can attempt to trap the ♥J underneath our ♥Q, as demonstrated above, and this will work when South has the ♥J which is of course a 50% chance. It is worth noting that there is a small risk in leaving a trump out when playing the hearts for the first time, as it is possible North-South could try to develop a heart ruff if the layout of the cards is unlucky. This is unlikely to happen though as it would need the defender with the last trump to have short hearts, and the other defender to be the one on lead to enable the ruff to happen. Basically, I think it is worth running this small risk for a chance at an overtrick, which would be especially important if playing matchpointed pairs!