You can't always trust your opponents so you must be alert at all
times. Here is a hand where I tried to be a bit sneaky but the
declarer was more than capable of dealing with me.
Scoring: Matchpoints (Pairs)
Hand #52
Dlr
E
Vul
N/S
A75
Q6
K743
6532
64
AK743
1095
1094
K108
J102
QJ862
J8
QJ932
985
A
AKQ7
West
North
East
South
Pass
1
Pass
2
Pass
3
Pass
4
All Pass
BIDDING: After North's
raise, South made a game try and North accepted.
PLAY: West led the ace
of hearts and sitting East, I felt our best chance of beating this
contract was to take two trump tricks along with the two hearts.
I followed to the first trick with the jack of hearts and then played
the deuce on the second. My partner continued with a third heart
hoping I could over ruff dummy. Declarer also saw my high-low and
trumped the third heart with the ace of spades just as I had hoped he
would do. However, when I followed to the third heart, declarer
knew I was up to something. It wouldn't work to now lead a low
spade to his queen because he had no way to get back to dummy to lead
another one. Playing his hunch, he led a low spade to his nine. Next he played the spade
queen and was able to keep his trump losers to one. I had tried
but declarer wasn't about to fall for my attempt to fool him. It
was just my luck to try it against this particular declarer.
From declarer's point of view, it was true I did not have to hold the
ten of spades but my attempt to promote a second trump trick made it
very likely.
