Keep your eyes on your side’s target

Nido Qubein, the president of High Point University in North Carolina, said, “Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all your energies on a limited set of targets.”

On each deal, there are usually only two clear-cut targets: declarer’s and the defenders’. (If the deal is being played in a matchpoint duplicate, the target is often unclear because overtricks are so important.)

In today’s deal, South is in four hearts. His target is 10 tricks, East-west’s four. West leads the diamond king: seven, nine, two. Who gets home first?

After North opened with a weak twobid, South’s three-heart response was natural and forcing. (A good aide-memoire is six and 16 — a six-card suit and at least 16 points. So, South’s bid was a fractional stretch.) North happily raised with three-card support.

Since East was unlikely to have two major-suit winners, West surely should have shifted to the club jack at trick two. Here, that would have given the defenders four tricks: one spade, two diamonds and one club.

Alternatively, given that East’s diamond nine was showing the ace, West could have continued with the diamond queen. Then East would have signaled with his three, the lowest card being a suit-preference signal for clubs.

Instead, West led the diamond five. Yes, East won with his ace, but he was endplayed. When he shifted to a trump, South won in his hand and led the spade queen. East took that, but declarer won the next trick, drew trumps ending on the board and discarded all of his losers on the spades.