[ThomasRush]

This is a fun hand from the recent Reno Nationals.

You hold
!S: ---
!H: KJ932
!D: Q543
!C: AKJ7

You deal and find your hand worth a 1!H bid. The first round proceeds:

1!H - (2!S) - 3!D - (3!S)

What now? I'm a little excited about the 3!D bid, and decide on a 4!S rebid.

4!S - (P) - 4N - (P)

Well, it's the 40th board you've played with this partner, you don't know, but assume 4NT is key-card asking.
Taking the low road, you respond 5!D (3014):

5!D - (P) - 5!H - (P)

Oh, heck, what's that? Queen ask? I've got it, and the king of clubs, so ...

6!C - (P) - 6!H - (P)

Gads. Maybe P was trying to get to hearts all this time? Guess it's time to pass... and hope it's not too bad.

P - (P)

The !SA comes out from LHO's hand, and dummy is revealed (your hand repeated for your convenience):

!S: K953
!H: QT76
!D: AT7
!C: Q6

!S: ---
!H: KJ932
!D: Q743
!C: AKJ7

OK, bucky, how are you going to come to 12 tricks?
(So as to not spoil it for others, please send me a personal email on BBO ("ThomasRush") and I'll summarize the results in a few days, giving people credit for correct solutions)

Things you might want to know: !H are 3-1; if you lead a heart to the queen, RHO wins the ace and returns a spade.
There aren't any weird suit splits; each opponent has at least two diamonds and at least two clubs.
LHO's 2!S bid was a 'standard' preemptive jump overcall (like a weak 2 bid, if that helps).
Yeah, so Partner should probably cuebid 3!S (Limit raise or better) instead of the rather unusual 3!D call... but then you might not have gotten to slam, so "God bless you, partner (if I make it)."
I'd call this an intermediate play of the hand problem. You should be able to develop a plan for 12 tricks at trick 1.

[LBengtsson]

Handviewer. Easy to see

---

♠A lead. Make 12 tricks.

[Cyberyeti]

You are receiving very helpful defence, is LHO's trump small or the 8 on the first round ?

[johnu]

LBengtsson, on 2022-April-07, 04:55, said:

♠A lead. Make 12 tricks.

Draw 3 rounds of trump and claim???

[smerriman]

johnu, on 2022-April-07, 17:16, said:

Draw 3 rounds of trump and claim???

I accept your claim of 11 tricks, given you now have a diamond loser..

[johnu]

smerriman, on 2022-April-07, 19:26, said:

I accept your claim of 11 tricks, given you now have a diamond loser..

You do have to ruff the spade return, and if trumps don't split 2-2, ruff another spade before drawing the 3rd round of trump, but the defense has made things very easy by winning the 1st round of trump and returning a spade, not to mention leading ♠ ace.

[ThomasRush]

Cyberyeti, on 2022-April-07, 05:02, said:

You are receiving very helpful defence, is LHO's trump small or the 8 on the first round ?

The heart 8 doesn't show up on the first round of hearts.

[ThomasRush]

For those still wondering -- it's an intermediate hand; if you didn't get it right, I strongly encourage you to work through the Bridge Master hands under "Practice" on BBO -- you'll learn many useful techniques to expand your declarer's toolbox.

This hand seems to have only 10 tricks. Four hearts (after we knock out the heart A), a diamond, a spade since they were nice enough to set up our king, and four clubs -- 4+1+1+4). Where can we get two more tricks? If hearts were 2-2, it would be easy; draw two rounds of trump, play four rounds of clubs pitching dummy's two diamond losers, and then ruff two diamonds with dummy's two remaining trump.

But hearts will only be 2-2 about 40% of the time. Can't you come up with a better line? Note: When hearts are 3-1, we cannot afford to draw all trump, because that only gives us 11 tricks, even with ruffing a diamond in dummy (assumes draw trump, play four rounds of clubs pitching two diamonds, then ruff one diamond in dummy, but that's dummy's last trump, we'll have a diamond loser still). You can't afford to play four rounds of clubs before you draw trump, as somebody's going to ruff that 4th club.

And the answer is that you can find a better line; it's a simple dummy reversal. We're going to ruff *three* losing spades in our hand, and use dummy's trump to draw trump.
Some things to think about: This would be a bit risky if LHO had not shown a six-card spade suit; LHO might be short in spades and over-ruff us if we're not careful. Here, he's shown length in spades, so we are confident he's not going to overruff even the 4th round of spades. We might have to overruff RHO, though.

So let's ruff the spade ace low and play one round of trump, say the king from our hand. If RHO wins and continues a heart, we still have two trump in hand for spade ruffs, and enough entries to get to dummy (win the second heart in dummy, lead a low spade and ruff as low as you can; lead a diamond to dummy's ace and ruff dummy's last low spade. A club to the queen lets you draw trump (pitching your two losing diamonds), cash the spade K (pitch another diamond), play a club to the AKJ to pitch _dummy's_ low diamonds).

If RHO leads something else after winning the heart ace, you can win in dummy and ruff two more spades in hand. Then get to dummy, draw trump, and proceed as above.

This is a classic Dummy Reversal -- you ruff enough times in the long trump hand to the other hand longer in trump, and then use what had been the short trump hand to draw the final trump. On this hand, it lets you count up tricks like this (not in play order!): Three ruffs in hand (South), three trump in dummy (used to draw trump), four clubs, Diamond A, and Spade K - 3 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 1 = 12.

Dummy reversals are a great tool; look for them when dummy's trump are good enough to be able to draw the opponents' trumps (a dummy reversal wouldn't have worked here if you held KQJTx of hearts, and dummy held, say, 8743, because ruffing with the x, T, J of hearts would promote the opponents' A98x (where one held A8x or A9x) to a second trump winner).

If you were paying attention above, you might have seen the magic of a dummy reversal. We got to ruff spades with our trump in hand, then pitch diamonds from our hand on dummy's trump, then pitch diamonds from dummy on our hand's clubs, and lastly ruff a diamond with dummy's last trump. Here, a dummy reversal was a way to get six trump tricks from our five-card suit, instead of just four trump tricks with standard play.