This was a nice hand Eszter and I played today. I
nearly got this one 100% right, but was distracted by Naomi towards the end and lost track of what I was trying to achieve. Even so, it was a good result:
EW Game, Dealer SouthNorth (Dummy) AQ108
1043
8
A6432
King ledSouth J2
AQ7652
AJ106
10
BiddingSouth West North East1
2
2NT(1) No
3
(2) No 3
(3) No
4
No No X
All Pass
Right fro the start I was anticipating a bad trump split with East holding at least 3 (just from the bidding). West led the King of Clubs, which I won in Dummy with the Ace (East played the Jack) and led a Diamond to my Ace and ruffed a Diamond in Dummy (both Opps following). A Club from Dummy gave East pause and they eventually discarded a Diamond. I ruffed in hand and ruffed a second Diamond with Dummy's
4. On this trick West played the
King and East the
9. Another Club from Dummy followed and East now discarded the
Queen, so my
10 was now good.
So the position was now as follows, with the lead in my hand:
North (Dummy) AQ108
10
-
64
South J2
AQ76
10
-
East was known to have started with 5-card Diamonds and a singleton Club, and West with 6-card Clubs and 3-card Diamonds. If East held the
KJ9( 8 ), it seemed likely that West held the
King. I don't need any discards on the Spades, however, but what I
do need is the entries to Dummy. At trick 7, therefore, I led the
Jack and overtook with Dummy's Queen. This loses nothing if the finesse is failing, as I've pointed out, because East
must have at least 3 Spades and I don't need any discards on the Spades anyway. The
Queen held, however and I now ran the
10. Once East followed with the 8 I was fairly confident (he'd definitely have covered with
KJ98) and, sure enough, the 10 brought the 9 from West.
Now West was known to have started with exactly
Kxx,
x,
Kxx,
KQxxxx and East with
xxxx,
KJx,
Qxxxx,
J. In preparation for the trump coup I now led a 4th Club, on which East discarded a Spade and which I ruffed with my
7. It was at this point that Naomi asked me something and I got distracted, because I forgot to take the marked Spade finesse when crossing back to Dummy, which would have allowed me to cash the Ace, discarding my
10, and then lead a black card through East's
KJ, up towards my
AQ, which would have been a very satisfying
3 doubled overtricks. As it was I had to be content with +790.
The thing with trump coups is that you need to reduce the number of
your trumps so that you have no more than RHO,
and keep your entries to Partner's hand so that you can lead a plain card from partner's hand at the pivotal trick (normally trick 12). No question here that East could have done better (by covering the
10), but he wasn't to know Partner had the
9 or that I was intending the trump coup all along if the
King was onside.