Declarer play has a charm all its own. For it emphasises the authoritativeness of the player who succeeds in making a tight contract without the opponents help which at the same time gives him that immense satisfaction of passing the test of his abilities laid before him. Like in life, every hand in bridge is a challenge that needs to be faced and over come.
Those who succeed are the ones who have not only tried their best but who have worked hard at the bridge table to visualise the possible distribution of the opponents and then drawing proper inferences, keep their timing in play fluid enough to be able to make the right moves in achieving a difficult target.
Some hands are pure routine, easy to handle with no deep thinking involved. Such hands cause little excitement and love of the players who all cherish those challenging hands where both the declarer and the defenders are under pressure and the battle to outwit each other reigns supreme. The wily declarer with the advantage of viewing all the deck has little problem in resolving minor challenges that come his way. But sometimes a hand may not look too complex to play but has the characteristics of turning into a real monster with some adverse distribution. The level of contract determine hardly the players ability as all levels in bridge are tackled with the same earnestness and concentration.
But when one is in a grand slam, there is no denying the fact that there is a tremendous pressure placed on the declarer who on the first look at dummy cannot see all ready made 13 tricks. Such hand pose tough challenges and today illustration is of a grand slam bid as under by east west on the following hand:
The bidding has proceeded as under with: Place yourself in the west seat and plan your grand slams play on north's low heart lead. Grand slams need careful handing and impeccable planning with no possible slip up that could jeopardise the mega bid. Well as you view the dummy how do you see your prospects? There are no club losers and if trumps behave no trump loser? Apparently there are no heart losers, either with the AH being a singleton in dummy. So the only problem lies in that third spade with the 3-3 spades between the east-west hand.
Naturally as all bridge players would think, the solution his in getting that club suit to run for the eventual spade discard. The problem is not tough on paper. It is the timing that is vital in getting the club suit through. Well, after AH, the best shot is to test the trumps first by playing the KD for you can hardly face a 3-1 break and go for a finesse in a grand slam. This works well for the declarer when north drops the QD. Of course you cannot afford to play another trump before testing clubs. So AK and a club ruff does not give you the 3-3 club break you were hoping for to solve all your problems of throwing that spade loser with a heart discard too.
Unfortunately the clubs are 4-2 with south, holding 4 clubs. After ruffing the third club low how do you proceed now? South's 2 remaining trumps need to be extracted and there is a club and a spade ruff mandatory for the grand slam to succeed.
It is here that the timing plays a crucial role. All you have to do is to ruff a heart with 9 and take the obvious finesse of 8 of diamonds presuming north to be honest enough not to deceive from a Q10 doubleton. Now ruff the last heart with J of trumps, ruff another club, draw south's last trump and re-enter dummy with a spade to reach dummy and get that spade discarded on the established last club. There is nothing to the grand slam play, is it? But pure timing!
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West East
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987 AK2
Q94 A
A8532 AJ92
J2 AK643
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W N E S
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P P 2C P
2D P 3C P
3D P 4NT P
5D P 7D P
P ALL PASS
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