[ArtK78]

Scoring: IMP

1♦-(2♣)-2♠-(4♣)
4♥-(P)-6♦-All Pass

---

My partner and I bid this nice 6♦ contract in a Sectional Swiss earlier today. But the thing that I found interesting was the play.

The opening lead was a high club. I won the ♣A, pitching away my losing spade.

Next was the ♦A from dummy. RHO showed out.

The only danger is that one of my heart winners can be ruffed out and a trump played back, leaving me with a heart loser in addition to the heart ruff. I found a neat solution.

At trick 3 I ruffed a club to hand and played a heart towards the ♥Q. Both opps followed. Now I played another heart and DUCKED it. Even if LHO had no more hearts, he could not do anything to prevent me from ruffing my last low heart in dummy and pulling trump to insure 12 tricks.

The safety play would have been even more impressive if hearts were 5-1 or 6-0. But hearts were 4-2. Still, we won 10 IMPs on the board against the 5♦ contract reached at the other table. And the IMP that I lost for not making 13 tricks did not cost a VP.

[cnszsun]

Jlall, on Jun 9 2008, 11:09 AM, said:

This position is fairly common

I guess it must be true.
I have seen it at least twice recently, the first deal in 'CARD BY CARD' by Roy Hughes and the 3rd deal in 'CLASSIC REWIND' of The Bridge World, April 2008.

[EricK]

I too have seen this in a few books. But that does not at all detract from the play. As the thread title implies, it is a hard one to spot (which I suppose is why it appears in lots of books!). We are so used to cashing just enough winners and then trumping losers to set up the suit that it is easy to forget about the possibility of ducking. I think because of the presence of the Q, this one is even harder to spot than the example Justin gave.

[Vilgan]

I was way stoked when I found a similar play myself. However, I knew from the auction that stuff wasn't splitting so I had extra clues on the safety play whereas you were able to find the play without info.

Definitely a fun one, and one that is not intuitively obvious at first

[FrancesHinden]

dburn gave me a hand from the USBF championships (Q-finals) where I'm told everyone went off:

AQxxxx
xx
xxx
AJ

-
AKJxxx
-
KQ8xxxx

6C on the ace of diamonds lead.