Make a Plan, Part 17½

[OliverC]

Some themes just seem to keep on coming up. The necessity of making a plan at Trick One is one that will never go away, I guess:

You and Partner have bid to a contract of 5 . Opps were silent and you had a smooth 1 sequence to the top spot, asking in Spades and then Diamonds before signing off in game.

South (Dummy)
  J9
  AJ3
  KJ76
  8743

2 led

North
  A8653
  KQ9
  A943
  A

East leads the 2 and you start off well: West covers Dummy's Jack with the Queen and you win in hand and then play another trump to Dummy's King, dropping the Q10 doubleton. Now what?

Clearly East has the 8 left, so you can only really afford one ruff in hand. Trying to ruff 2 rounds of Clubs is not going to be a great success. That means you must aim to either establish the Spades or try to ruff Spades twice in Dummy.

At trick 3, therefore, you should lead Dummy's Jack of Spades. West covers with the Queen and you ought to duck, because West cannot lead a trump at you. West probably switches to a Club, so now you take your Ace, cash the Ace (both Opps follow), and ruff a Spade in Dummy. When it turns out Spades are 3-3, you have 12 tricks in the bag.

If you don't make a plan, then disaster is sure to follow: At trick 3, Partner played a Club to her Ace, crossed back in Hearts and ruffed a Club, crossed back with another Heart and ruffed a second Club, thereby establishing East's 8 as the "boss" trump". Now, no matter what happened from here on, she was doomed to lose a Spade, a Diamond and a Club.

Declarer play is sometimes about grabbing quick tricks (usually so you can discard losers before the defence can cash winners in that suit). Sometimes you want to ensure that you take all of your trump tricks separately. Many times, it's about establishing a long suit by either ruffing it good or conceding however many losers you need to concede first in order to establish the suit.

Indeed, this hand is potentially one of the times when you want to take your trumps separately and/or to establish the Spades, but the key to that strategy has to be about ruffing at least one Spade in Dummy and, if the Spades are 4-2, to ruff Spades twice in Dummy. If East has 4 Spades they are powerless to prevent this, and if they only have 2, they can only stop you by ruffing in front of Dummy with their last trump,  and they are trumping West's winner. When, as here, the Spades are 3-3, one ruff will suffice. This hand can never be about ruffing Clubs in hand, because you can only ruff 2 of them and, if you ruff more than one, you're establishing a trump trick for East.

Plan, Plan, PLAN!