EVEN GOOD PLAYERS ERR OCCASIONALLY

If you study action photos of top tennis players, you will see that their eyes are rarely looking directly at the ball. Is this because the rebound of the ball after being hit by the racket is too quick for the eye to follow?

Good bridge players occasionally take their eyes off the ball too. Let's end the week with a couple of examples. Against South's four-spade contract, West led the diamond ace and continued with a low diamond when his partner signaled enthusiastically with the jack. The expert South tried dummy's queen, but East covered with the king, and declarer ruffed. How should he have continued?

When a defender has four trumps, it is usually right to try to force declarer to ruff something, in the hope that he will lose trump control. But on this deal, at double-dummy (everyone could have seen all of the cards), West's only winning lead was his singleton heart.

South cashed the club ace, ruffed a club in the dummy and played a trump. True, if the spades had split 2-2 or 3-1, he would have been fine. Here, though, West won with his spade ace and returned the spade 10. Declarer took another round of trumps, then tried to cash some hearts. West ruffed the second round and led a club to his partner's king: down one.

After the club ruff, South should have crossed to hand with a heart and ruffed his last club before touching trumps. Even if a defender could have won

bridge

with the spade ace and given his partner a heart ruff, the contract would have been safe.

Ruff those losers in the dummy.

Copyright United Feature Syndicate (Asia Features)