This was a tooth-and-nail battle for the part-score, as is typical in today’s tournament world. It ended with West converting East’s take-out double into a penalty double. The king of spades lead held the first trick, and South ruffed the spade continuation. A diamond to dummy’s 10 lost to the ace and East shifted to the 10 of hearts.
South was worried that West might have all five missing trumps, so he was happy to see East with a trump. South won with his ace and cashed two high diamonds, discarding a club from dummy. What next? South led his last diamond and had to decide what to play from dummy when West followed suit.
It was tempting to discard another club, but South saw the trap. Should he continue with the ace of clubs and a club ruff, he would not be able to get off dummy. He would be left with a club loser to go with three trump losers plus one loser in each of the other side suits. Instead, South ruffed his high diamond in dummy! Now a club to the queen, the ace of clubs, and a club ruff got his total up to eight. Nicely played!
Ruffing a winner in dummy is not the first thing you think of, but it neatly solved declarer’s problem on this deal.
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