Saturday, September 23, 2006 9:10 PM

The Trump Suit

PITBULLS:

If you are a lazy defender and have yet to ingrain the excellent habit of constructing declarers hand via hand patterns from bidding & other clues , do yourself a favour and at least do it for the trump suit. I will add a criteria for Kantars LSD by looking at the dummy . I will call it LSD TRIP where TRIP stands for trump in patterns. Apply the trump on the board with those in your hand and get a tentative pattern for declarer’s trump suit. This habit is more imperative if the contract is doubled.

Partner opens 2♣ and you bid 2♦ waiting with ♠xxx ♥x ♦Axxxx ♣Q10xx and partner rebids 3♣ vul vrs not. They now interfere with your auction so you make a forcing pass and partner doubles. This ends the auction so you lead a club and the dummy has ♠void ♥Qxxxx ♦KQJxxx ♣xx . Partner plays the club king and declarer ruffs. Whenever somebody shows out of a suit it is a discovery play where you must stop and apply a pattern. 7-4-2-0 indicates that partner started with 7 clubs. Now for the trump pattern. There are no spades on the board so give declarer 6 of them and the pattern is 6-4-3-0 with partner holding 4 spades. Since declarer has ruffed , he is down to just one more than partner.

Declarer now leads a diamond and you win your Ace and partner shows out discarding a heart. You know partner is 7-4 in the black suits so if you continue a club declarer will be down to partners length in trump. Declarer now plays the Ace and King of hearts which you ruff. It is now curtains for declarer as he has lost control of the hand as partner will now have more trump than he has. You lead a club and declarer ruffs. Declarer leads a red suit and partner ruffs , draws trump and claims. The contract is 5 down doubled for +1100. You can make 6♣ but the opponents have an excellent sacrifice in 6♥ which can only be beat if you lead the diamond Ace and give partner a ruff !!

Applying trump patterns guide you defense. This knowledge leads you to a tapping defense or trying to get ruffs or switch to trump to cut down ruffs. If you do not have a tentative picture of declarers trump suit , you defend in a fog. You are just defending blind which is a close cousin to leading blind. Patterns are your friends so let them assist you !!