5th April 2017

Dealer East
S
8754
   
Both Vul
H
A7
   
    D 4
   
    C AKQ1085
   
S
-
    S
Q963
H
J1065
    H
K2
D
AQ10953
    D
KJ762
C
J32
    C
97
    S
AKJ102
   
    H
Q9843
   
    D
8
   
    C
64
   


South
West
North
East



Pass
1S 2D
4D Double
4S 5D 5S Pass
Pass
Pass




This deal is from a Cheadle Hulme duplicate in March.

The opponents push you to an uncomfortable level.  West leads the ace of diamonds and switches to a heart.  Hoping to discard all your hearts on the club winners after drawing trumps you rise with the heart ace and play a trump to the ace to discover the bad break.  You can now pick up all the trumps by crossing to dummy twice in clubs and finessing twice in spades.  But that is no good because you cannot get to the club suit after drawing trumps.  Fortunately there is an alternative plan.  Cross to the club and continue clubs.  East must ruff in to prevent you from discarding hearts, so you overruff and exit with a heart.  They have to play a red suit which you ruff in dummy and continue with clubs forcing East to ruff again.  Now after drawing trumps you can ruff a heart to get to the rest of the clubs.

Using the clubs like this is called playing surrogate trumps.