Sometimes what so is near seems so far and in Bridge at times you see the winning line and the next instant you don't see it. As you concentrate, your thinking becomes more logical and focused to enable you to tackle correctly the handling of the key suits in a Bridge contract that does not at first sight look so easy to resolve.
Let us put the reader to test in this tight contract of 3NT bid by NS as under holding the following hands and to put the reader at ease we make this a double dummy problem allowing all 4 hands to be revealed first as under:- The bidding:
The opening lead is the 4H. Put yourself in the south seat and plan your contract of 3NT in the best possible manner. As you view the dummy first, you can see that without running the diamond suit in dummy, you will not be able to muster 9 tricks for as the hands reveal there are 4 diamond tricks after the ace is knocked out. The opening lead in hearts is not too bad giving you plenty of options along with 2 solid trick in hearts.
The club top honours provide 2 more solid tricks leaving you to bank on the KS to be rightly placed to enable you to get that vital 9th trick. That is all OK also, when the problem placed before you is a double dummy one for as you can see looking at west east hands that the KS is a sure winner having been favorable placed over east's holding in spades of the AQ.
So at first what seems so easy and quite tailor made has after all an illusory effect. For there is a big snag in the making of your 3NT contest that depends so clearly on making the diamond suit in dummy yield the maximum number of tricks.
Here what it all comes to is the timing of the play for you can see the snag - that is quite clearly visible now. How to reach dummy's good diamonds after the ace is knocked off. For surely west looking at the dummy will hold back his ace twice leaving you at what looks like a dead dummy since there is no hope of reaching it with the QC placed over the JC and the JH precariously placed whereby west with a clever eye can make it improbable for you to reach it.
Well let us see what was your plan in the making of this contract of 3NT? Did you win the first trick in dummy with the JH or in hand with the 9H? There are of course several choices open. You could even win with the AH making the entry of JH a possibility. But that would again leave west with the upper hand to foil your entry of the JH. Perhaps the best choice therefore lies in taking the opening lead with the QH to keep the door of JH in dummy open.
Now when you tackle diamonds and west, as expected, ducks twice. On the third diamond when he takes the AD, west's best return is a spade to east's ace. Who return 9 ofspades.Here is your chance of KS being a winner but if you have not dropped the 10S you are a lost cause for then west can refuse to win the third spade leaving you on play with one trick short of the contract. With the jettison of 10S on the AS, the contract becomes a certainly.If west wins, he is finally end played and so is east, end played if he wins leading a club to your good jack in dummy. Either way declarer is home.
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North
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5 4 3
J 5 2
K Q 10 9 4
J 4
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East
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A Q 7
3
7 2
Q 10 9 8 7 5 3
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West
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J 9 8 6
K 10 8 7 6 4
A 6 3
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South
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K 10 2
A Q 9
K 8 5
A K 6 2
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W N E S
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- - 3C Dbl
Pass 3D Pass 3NT
All Pass
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