Maintaining trump control is a crucially important aspect of playing in a trump contract. Yes, there are times when you might go all out for a cross-ruff when you hold all of the high trumps and deliberately lose trump control in favour of making all of your trumps separately, but that is the exception. Take this hand. You are East at EW Game, and Partner was the Dealer.
BiddingWest North East SouthNo No 1NT(1) No
2
X 2
All Pass
West (Dummy) K108
J10983
K
K542
East (You) A74
AK2
Q653
Q106
West leads the Jack of Diamonds and Dummy's King is taken by North's Ace. East switches to the 8 of Clubs. South wins the Ace and returns a small Club, which North ruffs. North now leads the 10
. How do you plan the play from here?
Well the play of the hand hasn't started too well for you. Given the Double of Partner's transfer bid, there is a distinct possibly the J!D was singleton, so best to play low on the 10
and aim to ruff in Dummy. South follows with the 8
. Now you lead the Jack of Hearts and North shows out, discarding a small Spade. Ouch! Now what?
The thing here is not to panic. Yes, you're going to have to give South a Heart trick, but the good news is that that is that is
all you are going to have to give them. Dummy's losing Spade will eventually go on the Queen of Diamonds, and your losing Spade will go on Dummy's King of Clubs. You can be absolutely certain that East started with 5 Spades, 6 Diamonds and a singleton in each round suit. Similarly, South started with 2 Spades, 4 Hearts to the Queen, Jx in Diamonds, and AJ973 in Clubs. Simply win a top Heart, cash your other top Heart, cash the Queen of Clubs and exit with a Heart.
If South takes their Queen, they only have Hearts, Spades or Clubs to play so the next trick you'll be in Dummt. Draw the last trump if necessary, cash the K
if it's still there, discarding your losing Spade (Your losing Diamond went on the last Heart), and 2 Spades and the Queen of Diamonds are the last three tricks.
If South doesn't take their Queen of Hearts, you leave them sitting there with it, cross back to the Ace of Spades and cash the Queen of Diamonds, discarding Dummy's losing Spade. Whether South ruffs this with their Q!D or not, that's the only trick they can make.
What you mustn't do (and what Partner did) is to win a top trump when North showed out. Cash the Queen of Clubs, and then cross to Dummy by means of a
Diamond ruff. Now you've lost trump control and in the process South has an easy discard of a losing Spade. You can cash the King of Clubs and discard your Spade and cross to the Ace of Spades, cash the King of Hearts. and lead the Queen of Diamonds. You're assured of 8 tricks, because you'll make the J
"en passant", but you can't now make the 9 tricks you were certain of before.
Actually, South gave Declarer a second chance to make 9 tricks, because they ruffed in with the Queen of Hearts and led a
Club. Instead of ruffing this in hand with the 2 and then winning the last trick with Dummy's Jack, Declarer ruffed the Club with the Jack, and then had to concede the last trick to South's
7.
Here Declarer was certain of 9 tricks as long as she unblocked the Hearts and Clubs and didn't attempt to cash the Queen of Diamonds until
after South's trumps were all gone, or South only had the Queen of Hearts left. All the tricks she needed were there (Q
, K
, Q
, AK
and the Hearts.