The Bridge Column

The North-South contract appears to have no chance. There is no side entry to dummy’s ace of diamonds so there is a certain club loser to go with the three major suit losers. Sometimes, however, something happens to a defensive trick and it is hard to assign the blame as to why.

West continued with the king of hearts at trick two followed by another heart, ruffed by South. The queen of spades was led and taken by East’s ace. A club or a diamond shift by East would have settled the matter, but East reasonably went for an uppercut in the trump suit by returning his last heart. Declarer’s trumps were too good for an uppercut to work. South ruffed high and drew the outstanding trumps in two more rounds.

South cashed one more trump, coming down to the ace-10-9 of diamonds and the jack-10 of clubs in the dummy. All would have been well for the defense had East discarded two diamonds on the spades, but East had high-lowed in clubs to show strength there so he had only discarded one diamond.

When South led his last trump, West thought it was possible that declarer had started with no clubs and all four of the missing diamonds. Accordingly, West discarded the queen of clubs. South shed the nine of diamonds from dummy and then overtook the queen of diamonds with dummy’s ace. He finessed East out of the king of clubs and brought home his contract. This all really happened and East-West were experts. What happened to that trick?