Foiled Again

I have never managed to bring off a trump squeeze, but at the Christchurch Friday duplicate a couple of defensive errors set up the required position. And for once I recognised the possibility at the table and not just in the post-mortem. And the opponents' cards were such that a trump squeeze was needed to gain an extra overtrick. But as you might expect from the title, things did not quite go according to plan...



My partner's raise to 4 spades was well-judged. West's failure to support partner was not, as it allowed us to conduct an invitational auction rather than guess whether to bid game.

West led a heart which, for reasons that have since escaped me, I won in dummy. West took the first trump and returned a club, which was ducked to my queen. (That was where both defenders went wrong.) I then played four more rounds of trumps and the ace of hearts. East does best to discard his hearts and a club, which would lead to this position.



Now when I play the penultimate trump and throw a diamond from dummy, East is caught in a trump squeeze. If he throws a club I cross to a diamond and ruff a club to set up dummy's king; if he throws a diamond I cash two top diamonds and ruff a club back to hand and score the last diamond.

So did I manage all this? Unfortunately not. No doubt expecting me to have some hearts after his partner's failure to support, East chose to keep hearts and his first four discards were two clubs, a heart and a diamond. Now I had plenty of tricks, but no trump squeeze. I played a diamond to the king, ruffed out the ace of clubs, and then another diamond to the ace, remembering to unblock the nine from hand. The king of clubs was a winner but I ruffed it and salvaged something from the wreckage by winning the last trick with the seven of diamonds.