Bridge is a game that can trigger illusions to a point where a defender thinks he is impregnable to beat the declarer's contract on the sheer strength of his high card points. But ground reality on the table is what matters in the end, as happened to west who thundered with a double of south's 6S contract bid as under:
The opening lead was KH, with the hands as under: West's double of 6S contract was made on the incredible strength of his 19 high card points that contained no less than 11 honour cards out of 13. But, as emphasised, sometimes players do get carried away in the illusion that no distribution of cards between the north-south hands could prevent west from collecting at least 2 tricks, if not more. One trump trick was a 100 percent certainty even if north held the AQ of spades which did not seem likely looking to south's leap of 6S. This left west to collect just one more trick out of his 2 solid side suits headed by KQJ besides also holding the KD. For west it was a perfectly safe double. In fact, looking at his cards and the overall bidding on the part of the opponents, it would have been a mistake and a bad judgement not to double south in what seemed to be a hopeless slam to make.
Put yourself in the south seat and work out how you can manage the little slam. Amongst the several techniques of declarer play, when one defender is stacked up with all the points, there is only one way to conjure up tricks and that is through some sort of endplay. But for that a lot of planning needs to be done and the cards played in a timely manner visualising all the time the most favourable distribution of the defender holding the high cards to give you the one chance whereby you can conjure up the 12 tricks needed to bring the slam home.
Well, did you get it right? I hope so. For the problem's solution lies in staging a trump end play whereby west would be trapped to lead away from his trump honour. But for that, the declarer must play the hand with proper technique and timing. Most importantly, where there are chances of the declarer getting stuck in an endplay himself due to his trump length, the legitimate bridge technique is to ensure that your trumps are shortened to the same length as held by the defender. But for that, the dummy needs to have enough entries to score your trumps. Here, one look at the dummy suggests that it is only through diamond ruff that dummy can have enough entries so that you are able to shorten your trumps by club ruffs. What declarer needed to ensure the contract was that when dummy is entered by a diamond ruff, east should not have the strength to foil declarer's plan by overruffing.
From the play of the ace of hearts and discard of heart in hand on the ace of clubs with a third heart ruff in hand, followed by diamond finesse of the JD and AD - it was becoming quite clear that south's JC following on the ace of clubs meant that South held no more than KQJ of clubs and on the first heart ruff, the fall of the JH meant west held equally the KQJ of hearts only. This gave east 5 hearts and 4 clubs. If east held 3 diamonds and 1 spade the contract looked doomed because with 4 spades, west would always score 2 spade tricks.
Assumption of favourable distribution as the only chance is the declarer's forte. So, with the only hope of placing east with 2 small trumps, south went about the cross ruffs with another heart ruff and a diamond ruff which east was unable to overcome. A further club ruff followed by the last diamond ruff in dummy gave declarer the last chance to ruff a club with his last low trump out of his holding of AQX and QD. West in the meantime was down to all trumps holding the KJ10.
All south needed now was to endplay west by playing QD which west perforce had to ruff and be endplayed to play away from the KJ of trumps into declarer's tenace of AQ spades to net in the little slam - a well played hand indeed leaving west flabbergasted and helpless but no more in any illusion.
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North West East South
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54 KJ10 32 AQ9876
A43 KQJ 109872 65
AJ K1098 76 Q5432
A65432 KQJ 10987 -
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The Bidding:
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West North East South
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- 1C P 1S
1NT Double 2H 4D
Double 5NT P 6S
Double All pass
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