That Rare Bird

A 1♥ Opening and a limit raise later you are the declarer in 4♥ on a trump lead. This is what you see when the dummy hits.

You see that you have one ♠ loser, no ♥ loser and ♠ K will take care of your ♦ loser. So you need to limit your club losers to two. If trumps break there will be no problem, as you’ll be able to ruff your losers in dummy. Without a trump lead there would be no sweat, you’d simply conceded two clubs and your trumps are powerful enough to ruff two clubs.

Unfortunately they got off to the right lead.. Why does this always happen to you. They have no idea why they are doing it, but they end up doing the right thing..

Anyway, perhaps trumps will still break, or something else will develop. You decide to win in hand and play the ♠ Q. This has to be done some time, and it might help break defence’s communication. 

No luck, LHO wins the ace and fires back a second trump, RHO discarding a discouraging diamond.

What now – perhaps RHO has only three clubs with one or two honors. In that case, you’ll be able to get a club trick going. Since you are in the dummy with ♥ 7, you pull a club from dummy. RHO puts up the queen and that wins the trick.

He now returns the ♠ J. Do you see any hope if RHO has ♣ KQxx? 

It looks like he has JT ♠ to go with his clubs. If that’s the case, perhaps ♠ 9 is a threat against him, but how!!!

We know he has 1♥ , and we are placing him with 4 clubs. So he likely has 4144. Or probably some 5431 with 3♦ and 1♥ . If he has a 3 carder black suit, you can guess it and establish your tenth trick.

The position at the moment must be something similar to this:

Do you see a solution.

Enter the rare bird – the entry shifting squeeze. You can’t stop LHO from playing the 3rd trump. He has to, when he gets in. But you can make it embarrassing for RHO. Accordingly you discard a diamond from hand and win the ♠ K,

And then play ♦ A, ♦ K and ruff a diamond – thus eliminating the suit totally, before conceding a club. LHO wins, returns a trump and you put up the king.

What is RHO to do. If he discards a spade, you can underplay with Queen, ruff a spade and your ♠ 9 is good.

If he throws a club instead, you overtake with Ace, and ruff the clubs good.

Does the defence have a counter? Yes they do. If LHO wins the first club and returns the 3rd trump, RHO can throw a diamond. Now the entry shifting element is gone. Declarer now has to commit himself.

Can declarer do something about this threat. Well, if you can see the position at trick 5, you can perhaps see it at trick 4. When you see RHO discard a diamond on 2nd ♥ , you can cash ♠ K yourself, pitching the diamond, and then eliminate the diamonds before conceding a club.

Now it doesn’t matter who wins the 1st club. RHO will still be under pressure on 3rd trump.

Here’s the full hand

The play didn’t quite go along these lines on the table, but it was still fun to identify this bird at the table, especially as a defender.