Answer
You (3rd seat, unfavorable) are declaring.
What’s your plan? If you had lots of time, you might think about whether it would be good not to ruff, but with six minutes per board allowed, you ruff the first trick. It looks like you’re in the normal contract, and you’d like to take eleven or twelve tricks if you can. One piece of good news is that the spade finesse is likely to win (the overcaller is most likely to hold the King of spades). Here are at least some of the possibilities:
- Clearly it’s wrong to play three rounds of trumps now; that would allow the defenders to take at least one club trick.
- If this were IMPs, you’d have to worry about a 4-1 trump break, but at matchpoints your main worry is taking as many tricks as possible.
- One good option is to play a trump to your Ace and take the spade finesse immediately; if it wins, cash the King of trumps and then play on diamonds; if trumps are 3-2 you’ll make twelve tricks (the opponent with the winning trump can take it whenever he or she wishes, but you will have the rest of the tricks).
- You could also play the King of trumps, then a trump to your Ace, and then take the spade finesse; when it wins, play diamonds.
Notice that in both these lines of play you stop playing trumps after two rounds, leaving the winning trump outstanding. This approach preserves dummy’s last trump, to deal with a second round of clubs.
The full deal appears on the next page.