Maintaining Trump Control

[OliverC]

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.

Bidding
West      North      East     South
No          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.

[kenberg]

Three uses for trump card are gaining tricks directly through a ruff, maintaining control of the hand, and tricks establishing a long suit. The first diamond ruff on the board at T4 was an example of control. The second ruff  accomplished none of these three purposes, and in this case was costly.


I often see these ruffs that at best have no purpose and sometimes go wrong, so I will say a bit more.

Let me strengthen the trump holding to make the point easier:

Suppose the trumps are
Dummy: QJT98
opposite
Hand: AK7.

Suppose it is possible to ruff a side suit on the board. To what end? We could ruff, after which we cam run the four remaining trump on the board, or we could just run the five trump on the board and toss the side suit card on one of them Either way, we get 5 ricks from the trump suit.  So there is no gain from ruffing on the board, and it could lead, as it did, to a loss of control. No gain, possible loss, why do it? IF (big if) ruffing the side suit could possibly establish a long suit trick in that side suit then there might be a purpose, and there are some squeeze situations where it is necessary to have the side suit under the control of only one opponent, but lacking some such solid reason for ruffing, there is no upside to doing so, only a possible, in the case at hand actual,  downside.

Here is another thought about how things might have gone. Suppose that the contract is 3 so getting 9 tricks is essential, and suppose the first four tricks go the same way: J to the K and A, back to the A, back ruffed, back ruffed on the board.  But now suppose that when the is led from the board, RHO follows suit.  It is best to go up with the A and then play the K.  It's true that if you run the finesse you might make 10 tricks. It is also true that you might go down if the finesse loses to the Q and a comes back, ruffed. If you go up with the A at T5 and both opponents follow suit now it is safe to go back to the board in and try the finesse of desired. I am not sure that it is the percentage play, going back to the board after drawing one round of trump and then running the finesse  wins if RHO started with Qxxx and it loses if RHO started with xxx, but at least it is safe unless there is a void somewhere.

My main point here is that even if RHO had not shown out of trump at T5, there was no point whatsoever in taking a second on the board. It does not increase the trick total to take a ruff in the hand with the long trump.

As mentioned, I am browbeating readers with this because I often see players take a ruff whenever they can, where if they paused a bit they could easily see that it does not increase the trick total to do so. Without even thinking through the issue of trump control, one could just ask "This will help me how? " If the answer is that it won't help at all, then don't do it.

[onoway]

one of the things that's delightful when it works,  is planning who you want to have leading to you especially when you know the probable lead is going to finesse their partner for you. Or for that matter  putting the lead into the hand that  no matter what they lead they will be setting up a trick for you, whereas if you take the trick you may well be setting up one or more tricks for them. It doesn't always happen of course, partly because I am not good enough to know where everything is, or to organize things to work that way even if I do,  but it happens often enough to be highly gratifying.

[kenberg]

This hand has some interesting features for the defense. J to the A and the 8 back. What should S do? To go up with the A and return a only makes sense if N was leading a stiff , and then it only makes sense if S has a trump. S is looking at 4 trump, E accepted the transfer over the X and so presumably has 3 trump. So to go up with the A and return a   assumes that N started with a stiff in both and .  This is the case, but there is still the question of whether it is a profitable line. He could think through, for comparison,  what would happen if he covers whatever card E plays. The thoughts go like this: If   going up with the A and returning a club does not produce a ruff, then clearly going up with the A is wrong. But if partner did indeed start with a stiff and a stiff , is it then wrong to not rise?  Say it goes 8TJK. Declarer has two losing clubs. Where do they go? Maybe after taking the K declarer runs the J. A reasonable play. S wins the Q and returns a . Declarer is in his hand and does what? Sooner or later he loses two I think.

Declarer has 8 tricks: 2 spades, 4 hearts, 1 diamond, 1 club, that makes 8. Maybe 9 will arise on some sort of discarding problem/error, but it looks as if 8 is the limit unless the defense helps.  After the diamond A, the  club A and the club ruff, then a $D, declarer now has 2 spades, 4 hearts, 1 diamond and 2 clubs if s/he just carefully takes them. How? Ruff the on the board a T4, take the AK of trump, unblock the Q, lead a small . If S takes that and plays a , rise with the K, draw the last trump, cash the high , come to hand with a and cash the high . If for any reason S does not play the Q on the third round, lead another.

The key play, I think, is at T2. South, on defense, can avoid setting up 9 tricks  by not going up with the A at T2.


If the contract is 2 it doesn't matter that much at imps. If the contract is 3 it matters a lot.

Added: If the J is played at T2, declarer can perhaps still come to 9 tricks by eventually ruffing a club in his hand. But to do this he has to make some choices, and he could easily (I think easily) go wrong.