Movie #2 : page 2

In a field allegedly comprised of Flight-A players, 30 of the 52 declarers went minus on this hand, and surely some of the positive scores resulted from errant defenses such as the one at my table.  That statistic is all the more amazing in light of the fact that, double-dummy, there are several winning lines other than the suggested one.  I suspect that most declarers played the hand similarly, then went wrong at the critical juncture.

Once both opponents follow to the first trump lead, the contract is ironclad against any distribution of the outstanding cards.  Declarer needs only to ruff his heart loser in the dummy, being willing to give up three trump tricks.  What a concept.  In order to prevent the heart ruff, the defenders would have to lead spades at the expense of a trump trick, irrespective of the original spade position.

Those who continued with a trump at trick six suffered a mental block, falling victim to the dreaded Matchpoint-Itis.  Careful defense now was able to collect three spades and a heart trick.  After winning the spade ten, west exits with a heart, saving his diamond ten as a later exit.  If he plays the high diamond first, then declarer can run the top hearts at him; if west declines to ruff, then he is thrown in with a trump, to yield the game-going trick to dummy's nine of diamonds.

Ted's Tip: It helps to understand the form of scoring under which one is competing.