Standard procedure

Assume you’re declarer at four spades and West leads the king of hearts to your ace. How would you continue?

When the deal occurred, South led a low club at trick two, setting the stage for a crossruff. West put up the king and tried to stop declarer from scoring his trumps separately by shifting to the deuce of spades, taken by South with the seven.

Despite the trump return, declarer could still count 10 tricks — five spades in his hand, two club ruffs in dummy, the A-K of diamonds and the heart already won. So he trumped a club, trumped a heart and trumped another club as West discarded the six of diamonds.

From here on, declarer was fighting a losing battle. Regardless of how he proceeded, he could not score two diamond tricks, since West could trump