Make a Plan, Part 37 of 100 :)

[OliverC]

Making a plan is one of the essential igredients of Declarer play (and defence). I seem to remember saying that somewhere before .

Coupled with that is the ability to judge what's going on on the hand and respond accordingly.

You are North, playing in 4 . The bidding doesn't really matter, but for the record,  You passed, Partner opened 1 , and the bidding went No - 1 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4

South (Dummy)
K954
Q65
KQJ104
A

Jack led

North
AQ632
72
8
KJ982

You draw trumps in 2 rounds ending in Dummy. How do you plan the play?

(1) Ruff the Clubs good. Any 4-3 Club split will accommodate this line, but you might run into problems when the Clubs are 5-2 or worse with West.
(2) Better: Force out the Ace and discard 3 Clubs on the winning Diamonds. This gives 10 tricks guaranteed on any distribution whatever (Just conceding 2 Hearts and the Ace).

At trick 3, Partner cashed Dummy's Ace and then led the deceptive (LOL) 10 from Dummy. Amazingly, both Opps ducked!!!

Now we're guaranteed 11 tricks on absolutely any distribution, and are possibly making all 13 when, as seems likely, West has the Ace and either the Diamonds or the Clubs are behaving. We just take the ruffing finesse in Diamonds, discarding a Heart from hand. If East wins the Ace we lose only 1 Heart and 1 Diamond. If the 2nd Diamond wins, we repeat the ruffing finesse and now we're losing no Hearts at all!

Partner had other ideas, however: She cashed the Ace and then ruffed a small Diamond, cashed the King (West played the 10, Dummy discarded a Heart) and ruffed a Club (West discarded a Diamond). Now another Diamond ruffed in hand (East discarded a Heart).

At this point the distribution of the hands is known beyond a shadow of a doubt, West with 2452 distribution and still holding the now singleton Ace, and East with 2425 distribution, and still holding Qx. The ruffing finesse in Clubs is now marked for 11 tricks. Partner, though, just completed her complete cross-ruff and conceded 2 red-suit tricks at the end for just 10 tricks.

The overtricks are no big deal, but on another hand you might need those tricks just to make your contract so it really pays to try to find the optimum line to make the most tricks possible safely.