Contract Bridge

The trump coup is regarded by many as the province only of experts, but more often than not it is a relatively simple play. Consider this deal where South made a skimpy one spade overcall and unexpectedly wound up playing in a grand slam.

West led a diamond, ruffed in dummy. South then played the Q-J of spades, finessing successfully both times. But when West showed out on the second trump lead, it seemed certain that East would eventually score a trump trick, since there were no spades left in dummy to repeat the finesse against the K-6.

But South, not a stranger to trump coups, trapped East’s king nevertheless. He started by cashing the A-K of clubs and ruffed a club to reduce his trump length to that of his opponent — the prime rule of a trump coup.

Declarer then cashed the queen of hearts and led another heart to dummy’s king. When he next led the established J-10-8 of clubs from dummy, East elected not to ruff, allowing South to discard a diamond and two hearts from his hand. But East was living on borrowed time, and he knew it.

At this point, dummy’s last two cards were the A-5 of hearts, while East had the K-6 of spades and South the A-10. A heart lead from dummy then obliterated East’s apparently sure trump trick, and the grand slam was home.

Note that it would not have helped East to ruff any of dummy’s clubs earlier in the play. In that case, declarer would have overruffed and drawn East’s last trump to produce the same result.