More to this hand than meets the eye: A student, a hand and a problem

I watched a student play this hand.  When you first look at it the hand seems very easy but as it turned out it wasn’t as easy as it looked.

	Dummy K1093 Q862 K K1097
West		East
	Declarer QJ8 AKJ109 9753 Q

Playing imps we arrived in 4 with no opposition bidding.  The opening lead was the 6 and east wins the trick with the A and switches to a heart.  You win the A as everybody follows.  How would you play the hand?  Do you see any problems?

You have only three loses off the top, the three aces in the off suits.  In a suit contract it is a good idea to count losers not just top losers.  You usually start with declarer’s hand.  Here declarer has one spade loser, no heart losers, a club loser but the potential for four diamond losers.  You are going to have to lose the A so the problem is to get rid of the other three diamond losers.  You can ruff some of them and discard some of them on black suit winners.  But you have to be careful about the timing.  Do you see the trap?

You have to keep hearts in dummy to ruff diamonds.  Once all the hearts are gone if all of your diamonds are not gone the opponents will be able to cash diamond winners.  Let’s look at what actually happened at our table and that will illustrate this problem.

Declarer played a second round of trump and then ruffed a diamond.  The diamond ruff was fatal!  Now declarer gave up a spade.  West won and returned a heart.  Declarer was able to discard a diamond on the fourth spade but still had a diamond to lose.  This was the whole hand.

	Dummy K1093 Q862 K K1097
West A54 543 10862 A85		East 762 7 AQJ2 J6432
	Declarer QJ8 AKJ109 9753 Q

Can you afford to play a second round of trump?  Yes, but when the trump do not break you cannot now ruff a diamond.  Your next play must be a black suit keeping two trump in dummy.  If the defender wins and returns a third trump you can give up the other black suit ace.  You will be able to ruff one diamond in dummy and throw the other two diamond losers away on black suit winners.  If the defender wins and returns a diamond you can ruff the diamond leaving a trump in dummy and play the other black suit.  If the defender plays a third diamond there is a still a trump in dummy to ruff it.

This hand is about timing.  You must keep enough trump in dummy to handle diamond ruffs.  If you are going to give the lead up twice then you must keep two trump in dummy.  You can ruff a diamond but only if you do not play a second round of trump or you can play a second round of trump as long as you don’t ruff the diamond.  (It is better to play a second round of trump because if the trump split you have no risk of having a winner ruffed).

What about the idea of just planning to ruff three rounds of diamond in dummy in the first place.  This is not the best plan because you cannot easily get back to your hand for all those ruffs.  You would win the heart return in hand and ruff a diamond.  You cannot cross back to your hand with a trump because you have the same problem as above, you will only have one trump left in dummy!  You must play a black card and you are back to the line discussed above.