Problem 02

Dummy's club length is annoying. It looks like we have a club loser as well as ♦A. We could set up a diamond in dummy and discard a club from hand on it – if only we had an entry.

We do have an entry. We can ruff a heart! That means we need to delay drawing trumps and we need to set up the diamond winner immediately. So take the first trick and lead a diamond to the king. Let's say that East covers with the ace and plays a second round of clubs. We win, cash the ♥A, ruff a heart and discard a club on dummy's ♦Q. Then we draw trumps and lay the hand down.

The important point is this. Ruffing a loser with short trumps gains a trick. Ruffing a winner with short trumps neither gains nor loses a trick, but it may gain you an entry.

Note that the idea of discarding two clubs on our master hearts and ruffing a club in dummy, is a poor plan. The clubs are likely to fall 4-2, and opponents would gain the ruff instead of us. Also it is not safe to test the trumps with two rounds, because if they fall 3-1 (as is most likely), then the opponent with the ♦A might return a trump to remove our entry to the winning diamond.