TIme that cross ruff

 Uttam Gupta reported this hand where a very nicely timed line of play brought home a doubled contract.

VUL opp fresh you open a light 1♦ in 3rd seat, and soon find yourself declaring a doubled contract.

 A trump is led and pd lays down a dummy quite along the lines of what he showed – 9 hcp and four trumps.

 Lets evaluate our assets, tricks, losers..

We can expect to get 2 hearts and one club for sure. Can we get 6 diamond tricks to go with them? or 5 diamonds and a spade? What do we know about opponents hands? Lets start by assuming LHO has five hearts and five clubs. He’s led a diamond and rates to have 2 spades. This leaves RHO with 4243.

Suppose RHO ducks the first diamond to our king, we can play ♣ A ♣ Ruff, ♥ K ♣ Ruff, cash ♥ A and exit a spade. That’s our 6 tricks so far. LHO will win the spade, play a winning heart ruff, overruff, DA and another diamond. After that even if RHO has the spade ace, we’ll only score 8 tricks. No good.

Seems like we need to get our spade trick, and setup a spade ruff in dummy while we still control hearts.

Accordingly Uttam found the winning play of a small spade from hand. LHO played the Ten, having started with AT. RHO could not overtake this without setting up a finessing position for declarer’s K9. So he let his pd hold the ten. Manas now cashed the spade Ace, making life somewhat easier for declarer – and exited ♣ K.

♣ A ♣ Ruff, ♥ K ♣ Ruff, ♥ A, ♠ K ♠ Ruff and we are down to Q9 of trumps and a club in dummy. ♣ From dummy now forced the defence to ruff and concede a trick to dummy’s DQ.

Very well played indeed.

Could defence have done anything. Yes, their only chance was at trick 1. East needs to go up ♦ A and  return a diamond.

Strangely, while the ♦ lead seems best, even the ♥ or ♣ lead beats the contract by eventually promoting ♦ 6.

The full hand: