Whaddya Want for Trump?
|
 J 10 9 7 |
|
 9 2 |
|
 Q J 8 |
|  K 8 5 3 |
| Q 8 6 5 3 |
|
K 2 |
| A 10 7 5 | |
K Q J 8 6 4 3 |
|
| 4 2 |
| 7 3 |
| 10 4 | |
9 2 |
|
A 4 |
|
|
------ |
|
|
A K 10 9 6 5 |
Contract: 6 ? |
|
A Q J 7 6 |
What suit do you want for trump? Why?
You go for the more nearly balanced suit here, which is clubs, because it allows for one more trick, which is to say you can make grand slam in clubs but not in diamonds. You win the opening lead, whatever it is, draw trump in two rounds, cash the A of spades and then run your powerful diamond suit, sluffing three spades from dummy. You then ruff a spade for all the marbles.
No one bid the grand slam here, but the few in 6 clubs in this matchpoint event got top boards, considerably better than those in 6 diamonds, where you can easily pick up a little slam, but get the sluff of only one spade when the side suit is clubs, and thus always have a spade loser and so cannot make more than 12 tricks.