When in doubt, "take-away" one more …

By Marco Catelloni

You are playing 6© with these cards, after a competitive auction

Board 20. Dealer West. All Vul.
	ª 9 8 6 © A K 9 6 5 4 ¨ Q 4 § 5 2
ª Q J 10 4 © - ¨ A 6 5 3 § A K Q J 4		ª K 7 5 2 © 10 3 2 ¨ K J 10 7 § 8 7
	ª A 3 © Q J 8 7 ¨ 9 8 2 § 10 9 6 3

West	North	East	South
1§	1©	Dble	2NT(1)
3©	Pass	3ª	Pass
4©	Pass	4NT(2)	Pass
6ª	All Pass

(1) 8-10 with fit ©
(2) 0-2-4 aces

Opening lead: ©Q
You ruff in dummy and play spades, South taking the ace and playing another (a better defence is to duck the first spade, win the next and play a heart, forcing declarer to guess in diamonds - Eds.) Not finding 98 doubleton in spades, you are in dummy with the ªJ. Now you are at the crossroads and, having ¨J10, you can play the Q both ways.

When you are in doubt, you can make the wrong decision.

Try taking away the ¨10. Now it is very simple to make all remaining tricks. You can suspect this is playing double dummy - I agree.

So let us try taking away the ¨J as well. Now, if you think that South has two spades, it's simple to play the ¨K, and then all the clubs, discarding diamonds. At the end you can ruff a small diamond or, if North ruffs before, you can overruff and still play a diamond to the ace, continuing your job of discarding diamonds on clubs. You can disagree with the assumption of "South having two spades", but you have no choice.