Today’s deal is from a competition in India some years ago. South was the great Indian player Subhash Gupta.
West started with the ace of spades, but he shifted to the ace of clubs at trick two and continued clubs to give East a ruff. East exited with a spade, ruffed by Gupta. The defense would have done better for West to have led his ace of clubs at trick one. Then he could have given East two club ruffs. It didn’t seem to matter much. Gupta was confident that East held all of the missing trumps for his double, but there were not enough entries to dummy to pick them up. It seemed that East would have to come to another trump trick for down one.
Gupta tried an old chestnut. He calmly led a low diamond and was delighted when West played low. He inserted dummy’s jack and now had the extra entry that he needed. He led a heart from dummy and captured East’s jack with his ace. He overtook his king of diamonds with dummy’s ace to take another heart finesse and claimed his doubled game contract.
To defeat the contract, of course, West had to rise with his queen of diamonds on the first round of the suit. That would have prevented the second diamond entry.
