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Get Out The Scissors

The title will be an overwhelming hint for anyone who understands the reference. Try your hand at this deal from the final day of the Reisinger Teams in San Francisco:

After a straightforward auction (well, maybe you would have rebid only 2♥ with South's hand--but in today's style of light openings, South has extras, so I don't mind the jump to 3♥).

West leads the ♣3, fourth best. East wins the Ace and returns the ♣9. Your move.

You want to be in dummy to take some discards. You play the ♣10 and LHO plays low.

You overtake with dummy's ♣Q and throw away two spades on dummy's high diamonds (opponents following with low cards).

So, you will lose only one club and one spade trick. Should you finesse in trumps to try to make an overtrick? What if the finesse loses and LHO issues his partner a club ruff?

Might it be better to play "safe" (not completely safe) and play the ♥A and another heart? In this case, you guarantee your contract on any 2-2 heart break or if the king drops singleton.

The form of scoring is Board-A-Match. This makes it a little tricky. If the other table is in a partial, you will win the board for 620 (risking down one to make 650 would be silly).

Given the friendly defense (they might have led spades), you are ahead of the game. Making four for 620 rates to be at worst a tie, and quite possibly a win.

This argues for the safest line of play which is to spurn the heart finesse. Accordingly, the best play in trumps is the ♥A, then the ♥Q.

But, did I distract you sufficiently? Do you remember the title of this article?

Before playing hearts from the top, it costs you nothing to play the ♦J from dummy!

When East produces the ♦Q, you are in business. You throw your last spade loser, and RHO is in. You know from the lead (low club) that West has more clubs. It is not possible that RHO can issue a club ruff. You are now 100% safe. Win any return and play trumps from the top. When East wins his ♥K, he can't cross to his partner to get his club ruff.

On the actual deal, a world-class declarer (the Reisinger final is full of them) missed this coup. He played trumps from the top and went down when RHO started with ♥K72. East won the trump king and was able to cross in spades to get his club ruff for down one.

Yes, finessing in trumps would have led to 620, but clearly the scissors coup (to cut the communications in spades) was the best move^*. If RHO doesn't produce the ♦Q, you can ruff and still bang trumps from the top and hope for 2-2 or king singleton.

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*Okay, I confess. I made a slight change in the deal records. Everything was as shown, except the ♦Q and ♦10 have been interchanged. In actuality, the scissors coup would not have worked.