In bridge one should never say never, and while an even trumpbreak is normally top of declarer’s wish list, there are always exceptions. Sometimes one has to project the complete distribution, and work out that bad splits can be more productive than a favorable break. That is especially true of hands like today’s.

After a fairly sporting auction by North, Augustin Santamaria of Argentina reached a delicate four spade game, a contract that was made even more challenging by the fact that the auction had indicated the danger of bad splits. On the lead of the club jack, Santamaria took dummy’s ace and played a low diamond. East won his diamond ace, cashed the club queen, and exited with a diamond.

At this point Santamaria was in a very awkward position; he could see that if trumps were two-two, then unless West specifically had the doubleton jack-10 of trumps, the defense could promote a trump winner for themselves by leading a third round of clubs after taking the ace of trumps. Therefore when declarer led the spade seven from hand and West followed with a small trump, declarer went for his only legitimate chance to make the hand by ducking in dummy! When East produced the spade ace there was no longer any possibility of the defense producing a second trump trick. Thus the contract made, for a 12 IMP pickup for Argentina, on the way to an upset in their knock-out match from the 1986 Rosenblum Cup.

All too often, your holding in a side-suit drives your strategy in trumps. After a simple auction to four hearts West goes passive with the lead of the club nine. East wins his ace, and cannot sensibly switch to any suit, so continues with a second club.

South takes the second trick, and cannot draw trumps at once; if he plays a trump to the ace and a second trump, the defense might win and play a third round. Even if trumps split, this could leave him with a problem, as there would be only one trump in dummy to cope with two or more possible spade losers.

An alternative approach might be to draw no trumps at all, and play on a crossruff. The danger with following that route (or even drawing exactly one round of trumps with the ace) is that the defense may make their three high trumps separately.

The winning line is to give up a trump at trick three. You can win the return, then play the heart ace, and only after that will you tackle the spades. Play the spade king, a spade to the ace, and ruff a spade, and you can later ruff another spade to establish your fifth spade. The defense win the first trick, the heart you give up, and one more trump at the end, but that is all.

Be aware that today the small trump spots simplified declarer’s task here. Had declarer possessed the trump jack or queen there might have been alternative strategies to confuse the issue.

When there is a choice of entries to dummy and you need multiple entries, then, you should consider choosing as your first entry the one that does not permit the defenders to block you.

On lead against three notrump West led the spade queen. Declarer won in dummy and immediately led a low diamond towards his hand, appreciating that for his game to succeed he needed East to hold the diamond ace. East played low, the king won, and declarer entered dummy in hearts to repeat the process.

Now East rose with the diamond ace, blocking the suit, and returned, not a spade but the club king, attacking dummy’s last entry. South withheld dummy’s ace for two rounds, unblocking the club 10 from hand, hoping East would switch, but East persisted with clubs.

Although this line of defense presented declarer with two club tricks, the diamonds were now firmly blocked. South’s last chance for the contract was finding the heart queen onside. But when that finesse failed, South’s final hope of nine tricks went out of the window.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but if declarer had entered dummy with the club ace for the second diamond play, he could not have been prevented from taking nine tricks. With the diamond ace onside, this line would only fail if one defender had held an extremely good club suit.

Now if East wins the second diamond and returns a heart, South can take this in hand, unblock the diamonds, then enter dummy with the heart king to reach the rest of the diamonds.

Today’s deal from a team game saw one South bring home his game, and expect some congratulations from his teammates. He was rather disappointed with the follow-up.

He had declared four hearts after an uninformative auction, and won the diamond lead in hand to take the heart finesse. He won the diamond return to draw the last trump then lead a spade to the queen and ace. The defenders exited passively with a second spade, and forced South to ruff the third spade. Now declarer had a guess for the club queen. South led the club jack from hand and when West followed low impassively he went up with the ace and successfully led to his club 10.

When declarer came back to score up the board he had hopes for a swing, but the board was flat. When he asked his teammates how declarer had guessed the club queen, the response was “He didn’t”. Can you see what his teammate was getting at?

After winning the second diamond, South crossed to hand with a third trump, cashed the diamond winner to pitch a spade, then exited in spades. The defenders could take their two spade winners but then had to lead clubs for declarer and solve his guess for him.

This approach of eliminating the side-suits and forcing the opponents to lead the danger suit or give a ruff-sluff is sometimes referred to as an elimination play, and is an important technique to acquire.

Though the point of today’s deal may not appear to be a complex one, a remarkable number of declarers missed the point of this hand from a club duplicate. After two passes East had opened the bidding with one club. Now South’s hand might qualify for an intermediate jump overcall, or a heavy one-level overcall. I’m not a fan of doubling then bidding hearts, but whatever route you chose, the likely final contract was four hearts.

Those declarers who escaped a club lead had no problems, but the play was more challenging when West started with the queen and another club. East won the second club and led another, which declarer was forced to ruff high.

Although it was a good idea to draw trumps now, it turned out to be dangerous to lead low towards dummy’s heart 10. You can see what would happen – East would win with his ace and lead a fourth round of clubs. This would promote his partner’s nine of trumps into the setting trick.

The more thoughtful declarers took the precaution of crossing to dummy by leading a low diamond to the queen before tackling trumps by leading the three from dummy. Now East’s ace fell on empty air and then there was no further problem in drawing the rest of the trumps. Dummy’s heart 10 was still in place to protect against a fourth round of clubs. This is an unusual safety play, one that, as we can see, could easily have been overlooked in the heat of the moment.

For today’s rather subtle deal put yourself in the East seat. After reading through the full analysis of the deal, you may feel like the problem is one that you might have expected to solve. First of all, though, let’s see what actually happened at the table.

West led the spade 10 against three no-trump. Declarer played low from dummy and East won his king and exited in spades. Declarer won the ace in dummy and advanced the club king. After some thought, East allowed the king to hold, then won the second club and got off play with a heart. Declarer won this in hand and drove out the club queen, and claimed 10 tricks.

After winning the spade king East could and maybe should have defeated the game by shifting to the diamond jack, giving up his ‘natural’ tricks in diamonds in exchange for establishing the third and fourth round of the suit.

Declarer might still be able to overcome this by cashing all his heart and spade winners, then leading ace and another diamond. East would be in, and forced to lead away from the club ace at trick 12. But if declarer follows the more logical approach of taking an early club finesse, then East will set up five winners for the defense before declarer comes to nine tricks.

And finally, declarer might consider rising with the spade ace at trick one to play on clubs and gain a critical tempo. But this could have been fatal on a different day.

Today’s deal comes from the match between Indonesia and Australia in the 1980 Olympiad and Dick Cummings was the hero.

In the closed room Indonesia had stopped in partscore but Dick promoted himself to the heart game. After a top diamond lead Cummings ruffed and made the practical play of the heart ace from hand.

He continued with the heart jack, and East won his heart queen and avoided shortening declarer’s trumps by playing a second diamond. Instead he led a spade to the jack and ace. Cummings therefore shortened his trumps himself by ruffing a diamond, then cashed the king and queen of spades.

Instead of taking the club finesse, Cummings realized that he needed nothing more than that East should have one club. He therefore carefully led a club to the ace and tried the spade 10. If East ruffed this high or low it would be suicidal, so he discarded a club, as did declarer. Cummings now ruffed dummy’s last diamond, and at this point exited from hand with his last club. South’s last two cards were the heart 9-7, securely poised over the king-eight, and that guaranteed him one more trick.

As you can see, if East had held the doubleton club king, taking the club finesse would have allowed the defense to prevail in the six-card ending by winning the king and returning the suit; now the timing is all wrong for the trump coup.

This hand epitomizes the strategy identified by Rixi Markus; “Bid boldly, play safe”.

Today’s deal came up in a Grand National Qualifier, and was submitted anonymously by one of the defenders, who didn’t want to embarrass the unlucky declarer.

In one room North-South had stayed out of slam. They took 11 tricks on an unexciting line by simply cashing off the top spades, a couple of diamonds, all the hearts and then playing a third trump. West got off play with the fourth heart, and the defenders collected a club at the end.

In the other room, North-South reached slam on the auction shown. After a diamond lead the correct approach for declarer is to win the ace and take both top trumps to find the bad news. Now a heart to dummy for a diamond ruff allows declarer to cash two more top hearts, then ruff another diamond.

If West overruffs he will have to lead a club away from the king, so he discards, and he must pitch a club not the 13th heart. Declarer now takes the club finesse and ruffs dummy’s fourth diamond, forcing West to make a second and fatal play.

He has three choices: He can overruff and be endplayed to lead clubs or give a ruff-sluff. He can pitch a heart, and then be endplayed with a trump to lead clubs; or he can pitch clubs and bare his club king, letting declarer cash two club winners. This last option is best, though, as declarer might misread the ending by playing West for an original 3=3=2=5 pattern.

Today’s four spade contract may appear to hinge on the heart finesse. But while the heart finesse is necessary, be warned that it is not sufficient.

At the table the defenders cashed their three top clubs, then shifted to diamonds. Declarer won the diamond ace, led a spade to the queen, then drew trump ending in hand and advanced the heart queen. West covered, and declarer tried to cash out the hearts. When they failed to break, he could not avoid losing trick 13, no matter which hand he finished up in.

Once West turns up with trump length, it is rather more likely that he has short than long hearts, including the king. The right line is to lead a heart to the jack at trick five, then lead out the spade queen. Next, overtake the trump jack with the king. When West turns up with spade length, lead to the heart jack and draw the last trump, then rely on hearts breaking 3-3. As it is, though, the sight of the heart king on the second round of the suit allows you to cross to the spade ace, unblock the heart queen, and go to dummy’s trump 10 to cash the heart ace.

Had West turned up with short trumps, you might well have led out the heart queen on the second round of the suit, subsequently playing East for a doubleton eight or nine of hearts, rather than trying for the 3-3 heart break.