Hard School Revisited

Pages: Page 5 of 5

Dealer: East
Vuln: N-S
Scoring: Pairs
  1. spadeQ 5 4 2
  2. heart9 8
  3. diamondQ 4 2
  4. clubA J 10 9
  1. spadeA 9 8 6 3
  2. heartQ J 7 5 4
  3. diamond3
  4. clubQ 8
club diamond heart spade NT
N - 2 2 - 1
S - 2 2 - -
E 1 - - 4 -
W 2 - - 4 -
Green square in centre
  1. spadeK J 10 7
  2. heart—
  3. diamondA J 9 7
  4. clubK 7 6 4 3

Contract: 4spadex
Declarer: West
Lead: heart9
  1. spade—
  2. heartA K 10 6 3 2
  3. diamondK 10 8 6 5
  4. club5 2
Double dummy analyser: makeable contracts
West North East South
1club 1heart
1spade Pass 4spade Pass
Pass Dble End
First principles should guide you home on this one. With good defensive values - particularly in dummy's primary suit - you would expect to defeat 4spade ordinarily, but East is obviously distributional so one of the situations where declarer might scramble ten tricks is via a cross-ruff. On this basis you should lead a trump.

At the table North led a heart, ruffed, and declarer played a club to the queen and ace. A trump switch now was too late. Declarer won in dummy, cashed clubK, ruffed a club, ruffed a heart, ruffed a club and ruffed a heart with the spadeK. diamondA was cashed, a diamond ruffed and there was still spadeA to come. A trump lead and continuation holds him to nine tricks.
21/03/2026: The DDA is showing that 4spade is always makeable, but the solution on a trump lead escapes me . . . . . Any ideas?
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