BRIDGE

The battle for trump control

Assume you’re in four hearts and West leads a club. How should you play the hand?

You start by assuming that the opponents’ hearts are divided 3-2, partly because they are likely to be and partly because it’s hard to see how the contract can be made if they’re not.

With a 3-2 heart break, you can count nine tricks — four hearts, three diamonds and the two black aces. A 3-3 spade break would eventually enable you to develop a 10th trick in spades, but a 3-3 break is only a 36% chance.

However, there is a line of play available that does not depend on how the spades break. It involves boosting your heart winners from four tricks to five by means of a dummy reversal.

Nothing can go wrong, so long as the hearts are 3-2.

You begin by taking the club ace and ruffing a club at trick two. Then, after cashing the A-K of trump, you ruff another club, enter dummy with a diamond and ruff dummy’s last club.

As a result of these maneuvers, you have no more trumps in your hand, while dummy still has one. But, more importantly, in the course of your travels back and forth, you have won the first seven tricks — and you still have three more coming in the form of the A-Q of diamonds and ace of spades. Come what may, you are sure to make the contract simply by playing your high cards. If one of your winners happens to get ruffed with the missing high trump, then dummy’s last trump will score the 10th trick.

By ruffing dummy’s club losers in your hand — which is the reverse of the usual procedure — you eliminate entirely the danger of an unfriendly spade division.