Hand of the Week #43 (Solution) ♠

The lead of the ♠K is not too inconvenient as we have no spade losers anyway. Our losers are actually in the other 3 suits, most of which are inevitable. Nothing can be done about the slow club loser, and the diamond suit simply lacks the quality to perform/attempt any finesses there so 2 losers there is also very likely (an outside chance of West holding both the ♦KQ but they may well have opted for a lead of the ♦K if that were the case). We therefore need to avoid a loser in the trump suit, ie we need to not lose a trick to the missing ♥K. Missing 5 cards in the trumps, it makes sense for us to finesse there so we require East to hold the ♥K. If this finesse fails we are off, so not point worrying about that! If in fact the finesse succeeds, we can then cross to dummy once more and re-take this finesse, and if the trumps break 3-2 we can then claim our game making 6 hearts, 2 clubs and 1 each in diamonds and spades. The problem, as you can see, is that the trumps in fact break 4-1, so after taking the heart finesse we know that East still has a small heart to accompany their pesky ♥K. To navigate no losers in the trumps, we need to now perform a ‘trump coup’ which is essentially ruffing so many times that you end up with the same number of trumps as the opponent. Then we will get to a 2 card ending with the opponents on lead, and East can do no help but to either lead a trump or ruff their partner’s lead, which will critically lead to us avoiding a trump loser.

So, win ♠A on the dummy and immediately take a heart finesse by playing a low heart to the ♥Q in hand. When this wins (phew!) cross back to the dummy with a small club to one of the ♣A or ♣K. Play dummy’s final heart and take the finesse again, and now we learn about the bad heart break. We cannot now cash the ♥A as this will not fell the ♥K, instead we have to perform the trump coup. In effect leaving East with their ♥Kx and turning to the side suits instead. We currently have 4 hearts left in hand, and to perform a trump coup we need to reduce this down to the same number as the missing trumps in the opponent’s hand, ie we need to get down to 2 hearts as well. We can only do this by ruffing dummy’s spades, so cross to the other high club and ruff a spade in hand. Cross to the ♦A and ruff another spade. We should now have in hand:

♠
♥ A10
♦ 76
♣ 9

We have not yet lost a trick, but we are now about to give the lead away to either opponent. If East-West now take their 3 minor suit winners, as they have every right to do, then whoever is on lead at the end of that will have to give us the last 2 tricks (because we know East has ♥Kx left). If however East ruffs in, in 1 of the next 3 tricks then they have bared their ♥K so we can now re-gain the lead (eventually) and simply just cash our ♥A to fell the ♥K. Also, if East were to ruff they would be ruffing a winner from their partner anyway, so this is an unlikely outcome. Playing this way, East-West cannot avoid you picking up the trump suit for no losers, and once the heart finesse worked this was basically a guaranteed contract.