Test Your Play

Eleven top tricks, four threat suits, squeezes galore! Win the spade in the closed hand and duck a diamond (key play). Knowing your luck, you want to rectify the count in case the three other threat suits do not break
3–3.

Say a spade is returned. Win again in the closed hand, cash the ♦K, cross to the ♠A and discard a club on the ♦A. At this point you will know which opponent has the long spade. (If spades were 3–3, you have the rest.) Say West, the likely suspect, has the spade length.

West cannot be squeezed in the majors because both suits lie over the threats in the closed hand. West can be squeezed in the blacks, however, so cash three hearts. Note: if West started with nine cards between
spades and diamonds along with doubletons in clubs and hearts, East has already been squeezed after three spades and three diamonds have been played.

If East turns up with the long spade and has four hearts or four clubs, you have to guess which is East’s four‑card suit and cash three winners in the other one.

Finally, if East started with nine cards between spades and diamonds with doubletons in hearts and clubs, West has already been squeezed in clubs and hearts on the run of the diamonds and spades.

You start with 11 top tricks. To justify the opening bid, West figures to have the ♠K as well as both heart honors. You can frequently pick up one trick by squeezing an opponent in two suits. Sometimes you can
pick up two tricks by squeezing an opponent in three suits.

You do have three threat suits and can arrange to have two single threat cards (the ♠Q and the ♣J) in dummy along with an entry to the closed hand to the longer threat, the heart suit, the suit that is
capable of producing more than one extra trick.

The trick in many of these three threat‑suit squeezes is to wind up in the hand that has the two single threat suits (North) facing the longer threat suit, hearts, in the facing hand, South. All this while you are
playing your last winner in your non‑threat suit, diamonds. Got it?

After winning the ♣A, cross to the ♠A and run seven diamonds. Before you play the seventh diamond, this is the likely position:

On the last diamond discard a heart. If West discards a heart, all of your hearts are good, so say West discards the ♠K. You cash the ♠Q, discarding another heart and West is squeezed again. A club discard sets up your ♣J for trick 13 and a heart discard sets up your ♥10 for trick 13. (This squeeze works if West started with any four hearts.)

Oh yes, congratulations. You have just won the tournament