[Walddk]

Scoring: IMP

South 7D
Lead: H6

---

This is a most interesting deal from the Nordic Junior Teams Championship over the Easter holidays. Only one pair bid the excellent grand slam in diamonds. Mind you, it is not that easy to get there when you are off one ace.

I could have given you the hand as a single dummy problem (only declarer's and dummy's cards exposed), but that would likely have been too difficult in the forum for mainly intermediate players.

Declarer got a heart lead to the king and eventually went one down because he was unlucky to find a 4-1 trump break. He lost a trick to ♦J.

Could he have landed the grand slam, and if so, how should he have played the hand?

(advanced or better players, please make your posts hidden if you feel like contributing).

Roland

[jocdelevat]

I thought first to play hearts forcing the op ruff but that still not enough he can keep his diamonds and let us play hearts. So I think we need to play all the cards till we remain with only aq heart on dummy by ruffing the 3 clubs play the 3 spades, play the 2 diamonds and ruff a small heart or better say to strip the dummy and op hand.

[hrothgar]

Cute hand:

There was some bridge author who used to write about "Trump Coup Charlie" or some such (Anyone recall the reference)

Not often that you see these sorts of hands in real life...

[bill1157]

i guess the trick is to cross to ♦K trick 2 then ruff a club. then ♦ then ruff another club. cash ♥back to dummy with ♠ and play top hearts

Bill

[gdawg01]

I am around a (B+I)/2, so not hiding my reply!

Seems like the play should go as follows.

T2 : Small diamond to K.

T3 : Ruff a club with small diamond.

T4 : Small diamond to Q - getting the bad news as it were of the trump split.

T5 : Ruff another small club.

T6 : Lead the J of hearts removing last heart from E.

T7-9 : Cash top three spades ending in dummy with the spade Q.

Here, E has no hearts or spades, J 8 of diamonds and 2 clubs. I have A 10 of diamonds and 9 7 of spades in hand and the dummy has A Q 7 of hearts and K of clubs.

On the lead of the A of hearts, if E discards a club, we discard a spade. if they ruff, we overruff and claim. Else, repeat

Looks ok at first glance to me - but I could easily be quite mistaken! :-)

[Walddk]

gdawg01, on Apr 14 2009, 04:15 PM, said:

I am around a (B+I)/2, so not hiding my reply!

Seems like the play should go as follows.

T2 : Small diamond to K.

T3 : Ruff a club with small diamond.

T4 : Small diamond to Q - getting the bad news as it were of the trump split.

T5 : Ruff another small club.

T6 : Lead the J of hearts removing last heart from E.

T7-9 : Cash top three spades ending in dummy with the spade Q.

Here, E has no hearts or spades, J 8 of diamonds and 2 clubs. I have A 10 of diamonds and 9 7 of spades in hand and the dummy has A Q 7 of hearts and K of clubs.

On the lead of the A of hearts, if E discards a club, we discard a spade. if they ruff, we overruff and claim. Else, repeat

Looks ok at first glance to me - but I could easily be quite mistaken! :-)

Impressive cardplay, and you will be successful on this layout. However, you made a slight error (which will not matter here). Do you see where?

Roland

[mohitz]

I think we can do with just 2 rounds of spade ending in dummy.

[gdawg01]

Three rounds of spades might suffer a possible spade ruff, I suppose. So two rounds ending up in dummy. On the lead of A of hearts, E does best to throw a spade, and we do the same. Thereafter, the play is as I originally posted?

[Walddk]

gdawg01, on Apr 14 2009, 04:40 PM, said:

Three rounds of spades might suffer a possible spade ruff, I suppose. So two rounds ending up in dummy. On the lead of A of hearts, E does best to throw a spade, and we do the same. Thereafter, the play is as I originally posted?

Yes, just run winning hearts through East. The slight improvement is that you also make when RHO started with only two spades.

Roland

[vuroth]

Oh wow. This is kind of hard I think.

I can tailor to RHO having Jxxx in trump, but I need it to come down to a very specific ending. What I really need is to shorten my hand in trumps (ok, I also need spades to be 2/3 exactly, I think, and hearts to be 4/2 or 3/3.

The general plan is to cash my 3 spades, then run hearts on the board, and overruff, to eliminate my trump winner. The tricky part is that I can't have more trumps than RHO, or it won't work.

K♥, K♦, ruff a ♣ in hand as insurance (wow will I have arrived if I ever maket his play at the table.). Q♦, get the bad news. Ruff a ♣.

NB: Now, I have 2 diamonds in hand, the AT. RHO has the J8.

J♥, AK♠, Q♠. Someone will be out, but hopefully not RHO, as I said. Now, my ♥ and ♠ are BOTH good.

Run the ♥, discarding ♠s. Overruff when necessary, drain the last trump, and run ♠ if necessary.

[Walddk]

vuroth, on Apr 14 2009, 06:13 PM, said:

J♥, AK♠, Q♠. Someone will be out, but hopefully not RHO.

Read above. You don't need to find East with three spades; two will suffice. The risk is that he ruffs the third spade (to dummy's queen). You can guard against that.

Roland

[vuroth]

Looks like I made the same mistake as others did. Took me a minute to be sure, but I agree that only 2 rounds of spades are necessary. Thus I can make on either 3/2 split.

The great thing about this hand is that, really, the club to the diamond on trick 3 does not cost. It would require impressive vision to see it coming that far off, though.

V

[gdawg01]

When its posed as a problem, I know I need to shorten my trumps etc. At the table - I REALLY doubt I would find the club ruff play I might try it as an afterthought

[Walddk]

vuroth, on Apr 14 2009, 06:18 PM, said:

It would require impressive vision to see it coming that far off, though.

Indeed, and you need to be an expert player to foresee the danger. The expert player will ask her/himself the following question when dummy's cards are shown:

"What can I do about it if trumps break 4-1, with East holding four to the jack?"

I think it's fair to say that this will be spotted pretty quickly by an expert, whereas it's equally obvious that the inexperienced player can't see it, or even more frequently, does not see that there may be a problem. Most of the time not even after the hand.

"Good grand slam. Nothing I could do about it with that trump split, partner."

Roland

[vuroth]

Walddk, on Apr 14 2009, 11:25 AM, said:

vuroth, on Apr 14 2009, 06:18 PM, said:

It would require impressive vision to see it coming that far off, though.

Indeed, and you need to be an expert player to foresee the danger. The expert player will ask her/himself the following question when dummy's cards are shown:

"What can I do about it if trumps break 4-1, with East holding four to the jack?"

Take it from me, that question sometimes runs through the mind of an intermediate. Unfortunately, what follows is usually only silence, punctuated by an "uhhhhh....."

[mikeh]

The theme of shortening one's trumps is a surprisingly common one, but I think that it escapes most B/I players because they learn, early on, that it is often dangerous to shorten one's own trumps... all too often, beginners take unnecessary ruffs, then pull trump and find out that they have lost control.

[gdawg01]

mikeh, on Apr 14 2009, 02:01 PM, said:

The theme of shortening one's trumps is a surprisingly common one, but I think that it escapes most B/I players because they learn, early on, that it is often dangerous to shorten one's own trumps... all too often, beginners take unnecessary ruffs, then pull trump and find out that they have lost control.

Guilty as charged, although things are just beginning to look up