A second way to a dozen winners

Douglas Horton, who was a Protestant clergyman, said, “Good ideas are a dime a dozen; bad ones are free.” In life, maybe; at the bridge table, anyone with good ideas will win dozens of events. In today’s deal, South is in six hearts. What line of play would be a good idea after West leads the spade queen to dummy’s ace? In the auction, two spades was fourth-suit game-forcing. Then South, after two doses of Blackwood, signed off in six hearts. Even though South knew that his side had a nine-card club fit, he wisely went with his own excellent suit. South could see 11 winners: two spades, six hearts, two diamonds and one club. His first idea was to hope that he could play clubs for the loss of only one trick, finding the suit 2-2 or West with a singleton royal. But he had a second, better idea: establish a third diamond trick if the missing cards were splitting 4-3. To do that, declarer had to ruff two diamonds in his hand and required three dummy entries: two for the ruffs and the last to reach the 13th diamond. Where were those entries? South played a diamond to his king, overtook his heart eight with dummy’s 10 (entry one), cashed the diamond ace (discarding a club) and ruffed a diamond. If a defender had discarded, declarer would have hoped that clubs cooperated. Here, though, East and West followed suit. So, South ruffed the spade king (entry two), ruffed another diamond, drew trumps, crossed to the club ace (entry three) and cashed the diamond six.