Daily Bridge Club

Test your play

This week’s deals have treated a basic skill in dummy play: setting up a long suit. To test yourself, cover the East-West cards. West leads the king of clubs against your six spades. What is your plan?

You have 10 tricks: five trumps, two hearts, two diamonds and a club. It seems you must make something of dummy’s diamonds. Say you cash the ace, ruff a diamond, draw trumps, lead a heart to dummy’s ace and take the king of diamonds. When diamonds break 4-2, you go down.

Nor can you succeed by taking the ace of diamonds, ruffing a diamond, leading a trump to dummy and ruffing a second diamond. With the 4-2 trump break, you lose control. WINNING PLAY

Your winning play is to lead a low diamond from dummy at the second trick. Say East wins and shifts to a heart. You win with the king, lead a trump to dummy and ruff a diamond. Then you can draw trumps and go to the ace of hearts to run the diamonds.

This play works when trumps and diamonds break no worse than 4-2. DAILY QUESTION You hold: ♠ J 6 ♥ A542 ♦ AK8732 ♣ A. You open one diamond, and your partner bids one spade. What do you say?

ANSWER: This is a matter of personal and partnership style. A jump to three diamonds would be descriptive, suggesting about 16 high-card points and a good six-card suit. Many experts would “reverse” with a bid of two hearts. That would be a strong action, but they would have methods allowing them to stop below game. South dealer Both sides vulnerable