Go For It

You open the bidding with a bare minimum – you do have three quick tricks – and soon find yourself in a somewhat iffy slam. West leads the ♠K. Can you justify your partner’s confidence and aggressive bidding?

Solution

After the opening lead, declarer saw that even with trumps 3-2 he would have only 11 top tricks. After rejecting as hopeless the idea of ruffing a spade in dummy and acknowledging that the likelihood of a squeeze in spades and a minor suit against West was only fractionally better, declarer saw the answer: a dummy-reversal elopement.

Declarer won with the ♠A and cashed the ace and king of trumps, followed by the ♣A and ♣K. After ruffing a club, declarer returned to dummy with a diamond to the queen to lead a fourth round of clubs. East followed suit and declarer ruffed. Next, declarer cashed the ♦ A and ♦ K, then ruffed dummy’s fourth diamond with his last trump. Declarer had made 11 tricks: the ♠A, five trumps and five minor-suit tops and still had the master trump queen to come for the contract-fulfilling winner. Declarer’s plan had a little less than a 50-50 chance of succeeding, but was his best available chance.