Cash Side-Suit Winners with Trumps Out: Avoid Ruff Risk
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A fairly common idea that is worth knowing about, is playing winners when the opponents still have trumps. Whenever it looks like you might have problems with trumps, consider just leaving the trumps and playing winners. Let's look at two illustrative examples.
To the below auction, the opponents lead the ♣A and another club.
You win with the ♣K. Counting tricks it looks like you have 1 spade, 4 hearts, 6 diamonds and 1 club for 12 top tricks. Underbid. You decide to draw trumps, only problem is that on the first trump your left hand opponent shows out, the hearts are breaking 5-0. What can you do?
The solution is pretty simple if you see it. Don't draw trumps, just play diamonds. Force your opponent to ruff, bringing their trump count down by one (as if they started with 4 trumps instead of 5), the same length as dummy. Now win any return, draw trumps and make 11 tricks. Drawing any more than two trumps will lead to the contract failing. Its unnecessary to draw more than that, try to look at the hand and appreciate these two things
a) you want the opponent to ruff, in order to reduce their trumps from five to four.
b) It is safe to leave lots of trumps out, they won't hurt you, you'll draw them soon.
Looking at the next example which is a bit more difficult, but still fairly do-able or even easy, once you are aware of the idea.
In the below auction, the 2♦ opening shows 4-4 in both majors! You don't care, you bid your nice five card spade suit anyway and end up in 4♠. The opponents cash two top diamonds and then switch to a club. Please think about how you might play it before reading on.
You would like to set up hearts with one ruff, and then draw trumps. The only problem is that you only have three trumps in dummy which is not enough to draw trumps and end there. Do you see a solution?
As is often correct, set up the side suit as a first priority, play the Ace of hearts and then ruff a heart. Now the hand is ready, play Ace and another trump, ending in dummy. Finally just pump hearts through East. She will eventually ruff one of them, but that will reduce her trump count by one, allowing you to over ruff and NOW draw her last trump ending in dummy. In total you will make 5 spades, 5 hearts (you started with 7, you ruffed one in order to set them up, and the opponents ruffed one of them, leaving you with 5 winners there). You will also make the Ace of clubs, total of 11 tricks.
In summary when there are problems around the trump suit, it may be a winning idea to delay fully drawing trumps, and instead playing long suit winners at the opponents.
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