BRIDGE

While most East-West pairs would fail to get the five tricks they’re entitled to here, it shouldn’t have been beyond the pale to find at least four of those winners to defeat this spade game.

But watch what happened during one match at the recent World Teams Championships in Poland when the Canadian Women’s squad played Scotland.

For Canada, Karen Cumpstone led the club eight to the deuce, ace and three. Hoping for a defensive club ruff and requesting a heart return if the ruff eventuated, Joan Eaton played back the club ten but everyone followed suit as South won the Queen.

To continue by playing trumps from the top and exiting with a heart to the King and ace. Accurately seeing no other hope for the defense, Eaton shifted to a low diamond and that was that for four spades – declarer did duck the first diamond to hold the loss to four tricks and down one.

But at an identical juncture in the play at the other table, the Scottish East found an almost unfathomable play when she won the ace of hearts and returned a third round of clubs to give Katie Thorpe access to the otherwise inaccessible two tricks in dummy.

Pity poor West who try as she might, was unable to find a trump in with her remaining red cards and could only sit and suffer as declarer discarded two diamond losers. Note that had West actually held another trump (doubtful given the bidding), an expert defender would have played hi-low on the first two rounds of spades as the way to signal three (or more) trumps to help her partner count tricks.

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