bridge

July 20, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

bridge

Both vulnerable. South deals.

NORTH

xK J 9 3

v8 7 5 3

wA Q 6 5

WEST EAST

x7 4 x6 5

uQ 10 5 2 uK J 7 6

vK Q J 10 vA 9

wJ 10 8 wK 9 4 3 2

SOUTH

xA Q 10 8 2

uA 9 4 3

v6 4 2

The bidding:

SOUTH WEST NORTH EAST

1x Pass 4x Pass

Pass Pass

Opening lead: King of v

Don’t overlook the tremendous power conferred on the trump suit by the auction. The ability to win tricks with low trumps cannot be stressed too highly. Here is a simple case of what we mean.

North was a point or so light for his jump raise to game in spades. The defenders start with three rounds of diamonds, East discarding an intermediate club, and switching to a trump, taken in hand.

Declarer can count five trump tricks and two aces. Since declarer must take care of three heart losers, and the club finesse is only a 50-50 proposition, he must plan to ruff three hearts on the table. Therefore he cannot afford to draw even one more trump and must resort to a crossruff, trumping clubs as entries to hand.

Declarer must cash the ace of hearts, ruff a heart, cash the ace of clubs and use two club ruffs to ruff two more hearts in dummy. Declarer has now upped his trick total to 10, thanks to the three ruffs in dummy.

We will look at some more crossruff situations in other hands this week.

2010 Tribune Media Services