Trumping in Dummy

The most fundamental occasion where you have to delay drawing trumps is when you have to ruff in the short trump hand (normally dummy). Dummy must be voided and extra cards ruffed whilst dummy still has trumps.

On our featured 4 ♥ deal there was such a suit – in which dummy has fewer cards - namely spades. Declarer won West’s top-of-a-sequence ♦ Q lead with ♦ K. Without touching a trump (which would signal defeat), declarer led a spade, beginning the voiding-dummy process. East won ♠ 9 and, realising declarer’s cunning plan, switched to a trump [this is the standard defence in such situations: the defence must try to remove dummy’s trumps before you can use them for ruffing].

Winning ♥ K, declarer led ♠ 6, voiding dummy. West beat ♠ J with ♠ Q and persisted with ♥ 7. Winning ♥ J, it was now declarer’s big moment: he led ♠ 7 – a loser – and trumped it in dummy. This was the extra trick which made the difference between 10 tricks and game made as opposed to nine tricks and ‘a good effort’.

Declarer now crossed to his hand via (say)♣ K, draw the remaining opposing trump and cashed his remaining top tricks, merely giving up a third round club trick.

There was a defence to beat 4 ♥ . West must lead a trump at trick one. The defence can lead two further trumps when in with spades and now there are no more trumps in dummy to ruff the third spade.

Whilst leading a trump would have worked well here, such a lead risks handing declarer the initiative on (at least as) many other occasions, where setting up diamond winners early is key. That’s Bridge – you can’t always be right.