BRIDGE

Nothing succeeds like success

Bridge is mostly a game

of hard rules and cold percentages, but it nevertheless offers a lot of room for ingenuity. For example, consider this deal where declarer found a simple solution to an awkward problem that threatened to send his slam down the drain.

He ruffed East’s 10 of hearts

at trick one and drew three rounds of trumps, discarding a heart from dummy as East likewise discarded a heart. Declarer then cashed the A-K of clubs and was naturally disappointed when the jack did not appear. This left the club suit hopelessly blocked, and there seemed to be no way to cash dummy’s fifth club and get rid of one of his two diamond losers.

Without that essential discard,

declarer’s only alternative appeared to be to try to make an extra trick in diamonds by leading toward dummy’s queen. If West had the king, the contract would be made, but if the queen lost to East’s king, as it would have in the actual case, the slam would go down.

However,

declarer had no desire to bank all his hopes on the location of the diamond king, and instead found a way to overcome the blockage in the club suit. At trick seven, with the Q-4-2 of clubs still in dummy opposite his 10-8, he led dummy’s queen of hearts and discarded a club on it!

West won with the king,

but there was nothing he could do to stop South from scoring the rest of the tricks. Declarer could win any return, lead his remaining club to the queen and discard the 7-2 of diamonds on the 4-2 of clubs to bring home the slam.