Contract Bridge

The power of a crossruff is shown in this hand where North undertook a slam despite the series of minimum bids South had made during the auction.

West led a spade, taken by dummy’s ace. Declarer cashed the A-K of hearts, discarding his spade loser, and then embarked on a crossruff.

The plan was to trump three clubs in dummy and three spades or hearts in his own hand, and this, together with the ace of spades, A-K of hearts, A-K of diamonds and ace of clubs, would come to 12 tricks.

Accordingly, at trick four South led a club to the ace and ruffed a club. He then ruffed a heart and ruffed another club. Next he trumped a spade, a club and a spade in alternating order to bring his trick total to 10. The A-K of diamonds scored the 11th and 12th tricks, and he lost only a trump trick at the end.

Without the benefit of a crossruff, South would not have fared nearly so well. If he had chosen to draw trumps immediately, for example, he would have taken five trump tricks instead of eight.

But this obviously was not a hand in which to draw trumps. Indeed, West could have defeated the contract had he led a trump initially -- not at all a far-fetched lead on the bidding. Both North and South had indicated distributional values, and a trump lead to cut down ruffing ability was well worthy of consideration. After a trump lead, South would have scored only seven trump tricks instead of eight and gone down one.

Tomorrow: Test your play.