West leads the ace of clubs. East plays the 9. West shifts to the king of diamonds, As South, how do you play it?

To see the beauty of South's play, let's look at another problem. This time you are West. You lead the ace of clubs, on which partner plays the 9. You switch to the king of diamonds. Declarer wins the ace in dummy and leads the 9 of spades. Partner follows with the 2. South follows with the 4. What is your plan on defense?

My tip this week is: As declarer, picture the opponents' distribution.

This is not easy, but the more you try to do it, the better your declarer play will become. In this case, you still may not see it, because this hand involves a unique and imaginative idea, which even a brilliant player might not see. But it goes to show to what heights your game could reach, if you picture the opponents' distribution.

See the full diagram below.

After the opening lead of the club ace, South tries to picture the opponents' distribution. East has five clubs and West a singleton. It appears that East's 3 bid was based on a diamond fit. Diamonds are probably 6-4. It looks like declarer needs trumps to break to make his hand, so give West 3-3-6-1 shape, or 3-2-7-1, with the ace of hearts. With a singleton heart, East might have bid to 4 or at least signaled with the queen or king of clubs for a heart switch.

Now once you have pictured the opponents' distribution, you realize that if you draw trumps and play on hearts, West can duck two rounds (unless he started with ace doubleton). This leaves you with four club losers plus the ace of hearts. To make this hand when West has 3-3-6-1 shape, you need to create an entry to dummy. Now picture the trump suit. East has 2 spades and West has 3 spades. Split honors?

You can finesse the 9 of spades trough East, losing the trick to West. Then you ruff the diamond return and cash a high trump. The jack falls! Now you have an entry to the dummy and can play heart honors until West wins his ace. The 8 of spades will draw the last trump and you'll score four spade tricks, four hearts and the ace of diamonds for +140.

One last tought, my friends. If you were West, and declarer led the 9 of spades at trick two, floating it around to your 10-6-5, it would be the winning play to let him win the trick! We'll leave this tip for another time ... something like: Don't accept Greek gifts.