Today’s deal was played in a tournament pair game some years ago. Overtricks are very important at this form of scoring and careful declarer play is often rewarded. South was Richie Schwartz, an expert who splits his time between South Florida and New York City.
The defense started with two high clubs before West shifted to the king of spades. We don’t know for certain, but we expect that this unusual shift was the result of a “suit-preference signal” by East on the second club — the deuce on the first club to show count and the nine on the second club to suggest spades. 10 tricks were easy, assuming a normal split in trumps. The challenge was to find the overtrick. Schwartz won the spade shift with his ace and played the ace of hearts. You might not think that the problem on this deal would be to find an extra entry to the excellent South hand. Schwartz was fully aware of this and played dummy’s four of hearts on the ace.
Declarer continued by cashing the ace and king of diamonds, and then ruffing a diamond with dummy’s jack of trumps. He led the five of trumps to his king and ruffed another diamond, this time with dummy’s eight of trumps. This established his long diamond as a winner, and he led the carefully preserved two of diamonds to his three. The long diamond provided a discard for dummy’s losing spade and Schwartz had his precious overtrick. Well played!
