Another Shameless Hussy? Or a Dummy Reversal?


K Q 10 8
2
A Q J
A Q 6 4 3
6 5 4 2
K Q 10 9 3 A J 4
6 2 K 9 7 5 3
J 10 2 K 9 8 7
A J 9 7 3
8 7 6 5
10 8 4 Contract: 4 spades
5 Opening lead: ?

A few hands back, I offered a crossruff so open in its invitation to a crossruff that I said it the hand were a woman, I'd call her a shameless hussy. This one isn't quite so open in advertising its crossruffing allure. With a spade opening lead and another on capturing the heart, the crossruff would be out. But with a heart opening, the allure of the crossruff should be quite clear. It'll be too late for a spade shift now. You can live with one spade lead. You can only ruff three hearts anyway; the crossruffing potential was established with that lead. While a diamond opening lead would leave the contract still up for grabs.
Anyway, look at the hand after a heart opening lead (and it was a rather common lead). You have every trump down to the 7, and only a second round club ruff with the 3 offers any risk. If you can presume that that'll go through, then you have an easy count to 10 tricks. You have five trump in the South hand, three heart ruffs in dummy and two aces. Adds up to 10, doesn't it?
My first thought was that you couldn't survive a spade opening lead if the defense could get its act together, win a heart lead in the West hand and lead a second trump. Well, it would queer the crossruff, as mentioned above. But it needn't queer the contract.
I pictured someone asking, "Wait a minute, fella. Wouldn't a dummy reversal play here?" And on playing it out, that seemed to be the case. Win the spade lead in either hand, ace of clubs, ruff a club, ace of diamonds, ruff a club, spade to dummy, ruff a club. That's the closed hand's last trump, of course, but you now have seven tricks in the bank, the top two trump and the only club left in dummy. You'd want to lead a diamond here, in case the suit splits evenly, but the defense can cash the king, get a ruff and a heart trick for their third trick and now dummy is good.
So, yes, it would seem that you can live with a spade opening lead by playing a dummy reversal and a heart opening lead by playing a crossruff and I guess a diamond opening lead by doing either.
Well, lemme see what some declarers did. Here's one down 2 in five. Heart opening lead, shift to a diamond, losing to the king, for which I can't blame declarer, diamond back to the ace. Actually, you don't even need to worry about that one low trump on the second round of clubs, since you can afford one trump lead. Hence, ace of clubs, ruff a club high, 3 of spades to dummy, ruff a club, ruff a heart, ruff a club, ruff a heart, ruff a club, ruff a heart. That's ten tricks: Two aces, one trump lead, ruffing 3 hearts and 4 clubs.
Declarer started out like a trooper. After winning with the ace of diamonds, now the ace of clubs was cashed, a club was ruffed, a heart was ruffed, a spade was led to the ace -- oh, oh, it's beginning to look ominous -- a heart was ruffed, a club was ruffed, a diamond was led to the queen . . oh, there it is. West can ruff that lead and lead a trump, and declarer doesn't have a trump for his remaining heart now.
Here's a declarer down one in four: A spade opening lead, wisely won in dummy and the deuce of hearts was led. Not many players are going to be up to ducking that singleton lead, holding the ace, and so the crossruff was now feasible. East himself led a heart to get declarer started. Declarer had the wherewithal to carry out his crossruff. Ace of clubs, ruff a club, ace of diamonds, ruff a club, ruff a heart, ruff a club, ruff a heart, ruff a club. Declarer would be plumb out of trump at that point, but he'd have 10 tricks.
This declarer (after the heart ruff at trick 3) cashed the ace of clubs, ruffed a club, diamond to the jack and king. This also shouldn't have hurt him, since that's the hand that can't lead trump. Lemme see: East again led a heart, and declarer shoulda been thanking him (silently). He cashed the queen of diamonds. He only now needed to ruff a club and ruff his last heart and claim. Instead, he tried to cash the ace of diamonds.
He just didn't need that trick. But he did need to get one more heart ruff. Instead, West ruffed the third round of diamonds and led a trump, and now, like the declarer above, the 8 of hearts going to the queen was the setting trick.
One more who went down before looking at a few who made: King of hearts opening lead, shift to a diamond, finessed to the king, a diamond back, and now the winners are sitting before him. But at trick four he led the king of spades and at trick five the 8. Need I say more? Indeed, he now led a third round of trump, meaning he could ruff only one heart! Now he tried a finesse of the queen of clubs. No good. Of course, he could still ruff a heart and sluff another on the ace of clubs, but perhaps not so strangely, his final and setting trick was also the 8 of hearts to the queen!
Well, let's see what declarers who made the contract did. Did they march smartly to their unimpeachable 10 tricks? Or did they stumble and get rescued by a defensive error? A little of both, I would say. (Actually, so many made it, I could only go through a sampling, but here's what I found.)
Of my sampling, a few made it in a roundabout way. I didn't mention above that you can live with only two heart ruffs, provided you draw trump before the third round of diamonds. So when a defender starts with the king of hearts and then leads another heart which you ruff, you're half way home already. You can lead a trump, overtaken, ruff another heart, lead a trump, overtaken and draw West's last trump. Now the worst that can happen is that you lose another heart and a diamond.
Here's one declarer who clearly was saved by an opponent. Opening lead a diamond to the jack and king, a diamond back to the queen, queen of spades, 10 of spades. Right away, I thought he shouldn't make. Two spade leads will work wonderfully on a 2-2 split, but you don't have a 2-2 split. Declarer now cannot ruff three hearts in dummy, nor can he ruff two hearts without losing the lead, subjecting him to a diamond ruff, nor will he have the entries to establish the 5th club. He could cash the ace, ruff a club, lose a heart, suffer a ruff of a diamond, ruff a heart lead, ruff a club (are you counting?), ruff a heart and now ruff out that king of clubs. But he would have no access to the 5th club. But it didn't work out quite that way.
Declarer now cashed his ace of clubs, ruffed a club, played a diamond to the ace, ruffed by West who now cashed his high heart and continued the suit. Declarer ruffed the heart, ruffed a club, drawing the king, and . . . and . . . Drawing the king? Yes, I went back and there on the second round of trump, on his first discard, East sluffed the 7 of clubs! With 5 clubs in dummy and 3 diamonds, while he held 5 diamonds and 4 clubs, this defender chose to sluff a club?
I have been hammering at Four-Card Suits for over a year now. I would call it second only to carelessness with honors as the most common cause of losing a trick on defense. More recently, I have been hammering at keeping the same number as dummy holds in a side suit. Obviously, East can't keep the "same number" of clubs as dummy, but he certainly should do his best, particularly when the 4th and 5th rounds of diamonds hardly figure in this contract. Couldn't he have discarded just one diamond before a club? By then both the club suit and the diamond would have been clarified. A very costly discard.
Had East saved his clubs, declarer wouldn't pick up the king, would then have just one entry to dummy by ruffing a heart, could now ruff out the king but would have no entry to the 5th club. Cashing two trump leads before thinking what he was up to would have come home to roost.

A number of people made 5. How'd they do that? A diamond lead would seem to queer that chance. If declarer loses a heart before trump are out, the defense could take one trick in diamonds, one in hearts and get a ruff. And if declarer takes out all trump, he's going to lose some heart ruffs and actually go down.
The first hand I looked at where declarer made five, the reason was immediately apparent: Opening lead a heart and then a shift to diamonds. The defense could hardly have been kinder. With that heart lead, declarer now has good communication with dummy without losing the lead, and the diamond lead now knocks out the king establishing a second diamond winner. Whatever the return, declarer can now cash the ace of clubs, ruff a club, a trump back to dummy, ruff a club, trump back to dummy and ruff a third club, establishing the suit as the closed hand plays its last trump. But declarer can now ruff a heart, draw West's last trump and claim.
It seemed to me that West could have saved the day by continuing hearts at trick two, wiping out a key entry before declarer would want to use it. However, that didn't turn out to be the case. Two defenders did just that and declarer still made 5. Lemme see how they did it. Both declarers, as it happened, were playing from the North hand above. At trick 3, declarer led the jack of diamonds, and second hand couldn't see the diamond suit and chose to duck. Declarer now played the ace of diamonds and then conceded a diamond to the king. That defender continued hearts into the third round, ruffed in the closed hand and the rest was a cakewalk. That lead made it easy for declarer -- he only needed one more ruff of a heart.
With the next declarer, a defender made one of those bizarre plays for which there is no explanation (not even a mismouse). Heart opening lead, heart continuation, ace of clubs, club ruff, diamond to the queen and king, diamond back, king of spades, ace of diamonds, fourth hand sluffing the nine of hearts. Fourth hand sluffing the 9 of hearts? Hm-m-mm. That defender then held two trump, two ittle-bitty trump and God alone knows why he wouldn't spend one of them to take that trick.