TRY TO HELP OUT YOUR PARTNER

When defending, not only is it important to watch all the spot-cards like a hawk, but it also pays to make your partner’s life easy. In today’s deal, South’s weak two-bid showed a six-card spade suit and 6-10 high-card points. North’s jump to five spades asked his partner to go on to six with good trumps. South was happy to oblige. What do you think the outcome should be after West leads the heart king? At first glance, the slam looks easy. South wins the heart lead in the dummy, discards his two heart losers on dummy’s top clubs, then plays a trump to the king and ace, losing one spade trick. However, a closer examination shows that there is a defense. West led the club jack after winning with the trump ace. Seeing no reason to do anything else, East discarded a diamond. Declarer ruffed, drew trumps and claimed. True, East made a mistake. Ruffing with the spade nine was indicated -- it couldn’t hurt. Here it doesn’t hurt East, but it definitely hurts South. After he overruffs with the spade jack, West’s spade 10 is promoted as the setting trick. However, West had a clever way to protect his partner from error. While South was cashing dummy’s club winners, West should have followed suit with the five, seven and 10. When West won with the spade ace, he could have led not the club jack but the club three. As dummy’s four would have been winning the trick, East would have ruffed to stop declarer from obtaining another discard. This would have effected the trump promotion.