Improve Your Play #06-09

IMPROVE YOUR PLAY #06-09 with Larry Matheny

It's often a good idea for declarer to immediately draw trumps but sometimes that has to wait. Here is a good example.

Scoring: Matchpoints

Hand #9
Dlr	N
Vul	E-W

	K10865
	J7
	AK5
	AQ4

	AQJ42
	AK1092

	K109

	97
	653
	J9732
	J82

	3
	Q84
	Q10864
	7653

West	North	East	South
	1	Pass	Pass
2	DBL	Pass	3
All Pass

BIDDING: My partner in the North chair opened 1

but holding only four hcp I passed. With so many spades it was dangerous for West to enter the bidding but he didn't want the auction to die at the one level. My partner held extra values with support for the other two suits so he doubled asking me to bid. My 3

bid closed the auction.

PLAY: West played the top two heart honors followed by a third round. I discarded a club from dummy and won with the queen in my hand. It seemed likely that most of the outstanding high cards would be in the West hand so I led a spade toward dummy. West rose with the ace and exited with another spade. I won the king in dummy discarding a club from my hand. Next I ruffed a spade in my hand as East discarded a club. This meant West had started with ten major suit cards and East was very likely to hold a lot of trumps. I then led a club to dummy's queen followed by the ace. I then led another spade and East, now down to nothing but trumps, played one in front of me. I over trumped and ruffed my last club with dummy's ace as East helplessly under-ruffed again. I then played the king of diamonds and watched West show out. My last two cards were the Q10 of diamonds and East was finished. He started with five trumps and never scored a trick. Making four earned all of the matchpoints. It's clear that leading trumps early would have been a bad idea.

Also note that perhaps West would have been better off passing 1