Bridge

Greek gift

Opening lead — king of diamonds.

There are plays that may look absurd and yet make sense because they provide the only solution to a difficult problem. For an extreme example, consider this deal where West leads a diamond against four spades.

It seems impossible to make the contract, and, in fact, it looks as though declarer must lose two hearts and three clubs and go down two. But bridge can be a strange game at times, and if South handles the play perfectly, he makes four spades.

He wins the diamond with the ace, leads the ten of spades, which wins, and continues with the queen. Let's say West covers with the king (his play doesn’t really matter). Declarer takes the ace, cashes the ace of clubs and returns the four of spades to his own deuce and West's seven!

West plays the Q-10 of diamonds, but instead of trumping either one, South discards two hearts from dummy and two clubs from his hand, leaving this position:

When West plays another diamond, South ruffs in dummy, discarding his last club, but East is stuck for a discard. If he discards a heart, declarer cashes the ace of hearts, ruffs a club, ruffs a heart and claims the rest. If East discards a club instead, South ruffs a club, plays a heart to the ace and ruffs another club to score the rest.

As we said, bridge can sometimes be a very strange game.