MONTHLY HAND NOV 2000 
INTRODUCTION
    THIS MONTH'S TOPIC: 
          Strip and End Play
          Ruff & Sluff
The End Play or Throw In is when the Declarer at a strategic moment makes a Defender win a trick. Stripping does not mean taking off your clothes in order to distract a Defender (although this does sometimes work). Rather, it is removing the Defender's safe exit card. The End Play is also called an Elimination Play because Declarer eliminates the Defender's way out of his hand. So when Defender does get the lead he is forced to give up a trick. Tricky, tricky.
     Before we go on to this month's hand, let's look at some examples of suit combinations in which the Declarer will get a trick only if a Defender leads that suit.
     DUMMY            DUMMY            DUMMY 
XXCJ 8 3XXXXXXS Q 4 3 XXXXXID A J 4
 

     HAND               HAND                HAND 
XICK 6 2XXXXXXS J 6 5XXXXXID K 10 5

     1                  2                  3 

In EXAMPLE 1 Declarer can lose 3 tricks if he plays the Club suit. This happens when the Q C is behind the J C, and the A C is behind the K C. But if any Defender leads Clubs, the Declarer is guaranteed one trick.
       In EXAMPLE 2, if the A S and the K S are in different hands (a 75% chance), the Declarer will lose all three tricks. But again, if the suit is led by the Defense, one trick will be guaranteed in the Spade suit.
     In EXAMPLE 3 the Declarer has to guess where the Q D is. If a Defender leads a Diamond the guess is eliminated and the Declarer makes 3 Diamond tricks.

 
BIDDING
South, with a big hand of 19 High Card Points and a doubleton Diamond, opens the bidding 1 S. North with a minimum response and great support bids 2 S. South knows that they are in the game zone and bids 4 S. Note: a 3 S bid by South is invitational and can be passed by North. 
      If game is there, bid it. Do not worry about making or not making the contract. If you made every contract that was bid, there would be no need to ever play the hands. Just bid and score. And if you are making every contract that you bid, then you are probably not bidding high enough. Bridge matches are usually lost by under bidding not over bidding. 

 
OPENING LEAD
West sees that the A C is a winning trick. Where will the other three tricks needed to set the hand come from? The Declarer and Dummy should have between them 26 points to be in game. This plus West's 10 points does not leave his partner with much. East has 4 or 5 points at the most. 
     It is still possible to set the contract if East has the right cards. But now it is important to promote a Diamond winner by knocking out Declarer's A D(if he has it), or taking 3 Diamond tricks. So play the top of the 2 card sequence in Diamonds, the K D.

 
PLAY
Dummy comes down. Stop! Do not play that A D. Make a plan first. A good plan is based on counting, and in a Suit Contract,  Declarer counts losers. Assume all finesses will lose and the worst possible distribution. So let's do it. 
      0 Spades;  0 Hearts; 1 Diamond; and 3 Clubs. That makes a total of 4 losers; one trick too many to make 4 S. What  to do? 
     PLAN: There is no way to ruff a Diamond loser or throw it off on a winner in another suit. The same with the Clubs; the Club losers cannot be ruffed or thrown off on winners in another suit. If the Declarer has to play Clubs and the the A C and the KC are split between the Defenders (see EXAMPLE 2 in the Introduction), then Declarer will lose 3 tricks in that suit. But if the Defenders are forced to lead Clubs, then the Declarer will be guaranteed one Club winner. The next question is obvious: how to make the Defenders lead Clubs? 
       It will be impossible to deplete the Defenders of all suits but Clubs. They will have another suit to lead. But what can be done is to make leading that other suit a gift of one trick for the Declarer. And that gift is called a Ruff & Sluff. So when a suit (other than Clubs) is led, Declarer will Ruff (trump)in one hand and Sluff (throw off) a loser (in this case a Club) in the other hand. To make this threat a reality, the Declarer has Strip (get rid of all cards) both Dummy and Declarer of Hearts and Diamonds. 
      PLAY: Win the first trick with the A D. Extract all the trump in two rounds. Now for the Stripping. Play three rounds of Hearts. Thus Dummy and Declarer's hand have no Hearts. Ready for the coup d'end play? Now the Declarer will Strip the Diamonds. Play the small Diamond. It does not matter which Defender wins the trick. Now, the  Defender who has won the trick will have to either lead a Club or  will have to lead a Club or give the Declarer a Ruff & Sluff. 
      How  does the Ruff & Sluff work? Let's say East won the Diamond trick. If East plays a Heart or a Diamond, the Declarer will throw away (Sluff) the losing 3 C from her hand and trump (Ruff) with a Spade in Dummy. This limits the loss in Clubs to 2 tricks, not 3. 
      Of course if a Club is led, then there will only be 2 losers in that suit. In either case there will be only 2 Club losers and 1 Diamond loser. Making 4 S.
 

QUESTION: Would Declarer make the contract if a small  Diamond was lost before Hearts were played? 
     Answer

 
DEFENSE 
The Defense is pretty straightforward. Nothing can be done if South plays correctly. 
       No matter what East leads, Declarer can still execute the Strip and End play. 

 
 

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