BRIDGE

Today’s deal illustrates a rare play sometimes called the “striptease coup”. West leads the king of hearts, and declarer sees he might lose a heart and two trumps and go down one in five clubs. To try to avoid this outcome, South wins the heart lead with the ace, cashes the queen of spades, crosses to the ten of diamonds and then plays the ace of spades. East ruffs with the four to stop declarer from discarding his heart loser, and South overruffs with the five. Declarer cashes the ace of diamonds and continues with the king, planning to discard dummy’s heart loser if West follows suit. But West trumps the third diamond with the three, and dummy overruffs with the eight as East follows suit. Continuing his campaign, declarer plays the king of spades from dummy, forcing East to ruff with the six as South overruffs with the seven. The striptease has now been accomplished. Both East and West have been denuded of their low trumps, leaving the king and ace as the only trumps still outstanding. Declarer next leads the queen of diamonds, and West can do no better than ruff with the ace as dummy’s nine of hearts is discarded. Sooner or later South ruffs the jack of hearts in dummy, and his only losers turn out to be the A-K of trumps. The sequence of plays described here is, of course, an unusual way of extracting trumps, but that is hardly a bar to its use.