Master dentist at work by Gerry Weston

My partner, Paul Thornton, and I were watching our Woodberry B teammates in a EBU lockdown league match (now sadly back in Division 5 and overtaken by Woodberry C team!)

Paul Lamford is declarer in 3NT and this looked straightforward: (In the other room the bidding was the same but North didn’t bid 3N so 3H made +2)

 

Lead 2S taken by the A, and Q diamonds returned (naturally West didn’t want to allow declarer to finesse JS)

 

With clubs and hearts breaking well and the favourable spade position looked to us like 1 or 2 overtricks

The plan seemed to be to make one or two long club tricks and a heart if clubs break 4:2. Normally with that layout of clubs one can duck a club then play off 2 rounds; If don’t break then can establish extra trick with entry with AH or KD

 

So the first surprise is that Paul ran the diamond round to dummy’s K and led AC. What is he doing!? Assume he may be relying instead on heart break and finesse of TD.

He entered hand with KH and led his club, East played Q and Paul let it win. East now faced a difficult led and led a diamond to J and A. OK, Paul now has 8 tricks so surely will duck a heart!

But no; 2^nd surprise. He cashed TD then over to AH and led out the clubs; making contract via 4 club tricks, 3 diamonds and 2 hearts.

 

It seemed a bit lucky and, puzzled, we asked him afterwards what was going on: (If it were anyone else we’d assume he’d mis-clicked)

Since spades were bid and supported he placed West with 5 spades and East 3. Once all followed to TD he knew that East could have at most 7 cards in clubs and hearts. If 3 clubs then his line gives 9 tricks (as it did with the actual layout); If 3 hearts and 4 clubs then he throws East in with 3^rd heart; East makes a club but then has to lead spade into KJ.

 

But one asks, what happens if East has only 2 diamonds with 4 hearts and 4 clubs? But that is where the beauty of this play lies as East has to throw a spade on the diamond (a dentist coup apparently) and then declarer plays off KS (a further dentist coup extracting East’s last spade). Then declarer would play A and another heart and after making 2 heart tricks East would have to lead away from his club honour allowing declarer 2 further club tricks and the contract, via 3 diamonds,,2 hearts and 4 club tricks. Brilliant!