Bridge

Opening lead — five of diamonds.

There are many tricks of the trade that can give a far-sighted declarer a better chance of achieving the best possible result in a given hand. Consider this example from a team-of-four match.

At the first table, the bidding went as shown, South arriving quickly at four spades. West led his fourth-best diamond, taken by the ace, on which East signalled with the eight. Declarer then played a low trump to his king, won by West with the ace, and West returned a diamond to East’s king, which declarer ruffed.

After cashing the jack of trumps, South led a club to the 10, taken by East’s queen. Back came the eight of hearts, declarer’s queen losing to the king, and South still had to lose a club trick for down one.

Declarer was, of course, unluckily to lose both the heart and club finesses, but, even so, it must be noted that he did not play his cards to best advantage.

His counterpart at the second table also got a diamond lead against four spades, but made the contract. He varied the play more than slightly by ruffing a diamond at trick two before leading a trump to West’s ace. West was then faced with a difficult decision.

He had to choose between returning a heart or a club, since a diamond return would yield a ruff-and-discard. West realised that if his partner held spades x-x, hearts A-10-x, diamonds K-x-x-x and clubs Q-x-x-x, a low heart return would offer the best chance to set the contract as declarer would eventually have to guess how to play the clubs. But if East held spades x-x, hearts x-x-x, diamonds K-x-x-x and clubs A-Q-x-x, only a club return would work out satisfactorily.

Faced with this dilemma, West chose to lead a low heart instead of a club, handing South the contract. Declarer’s foresight at this table in electing to ruff a diamond at trick two — thus creating a chance for the defence to go wrong later on — paid maximum dividends in the end.