Contract Bridge

Some contracts look so secure that declarer may take success for granted. This can be a dangerous assumption, especially against competent defenders.

Consider this case where West led the nine of spades against three notrump. South took one look at dummy and figured the outcome was merely a question of how many overtricks he would make.

He began by covering the nine of spades with the queen. However, East, recognizing his partner’s lead as top-of-nothing, withheld the king, playing the deuce instead. Declarer next led a diamond to the queen, and West did his part by refusing to take the ace.

South could now have saved the day by abandoning diamonds and establishing hearts. But, not unnaturally, he chose to pursue diamonds and crossed to the ace of hearts in order to play the diamond king.

West won with the ace and, heeding his partner’s low spade play at trick one, shifted to a club. Declarer played low from dummy, and East won with the king and returned a club to dummy’s ace. With the diamonds not yet established and no entries left in dummy, South now played the king and another heart. But West won and cashed the diamond jack and club queen to set the contract one trick.

Of course, had East played the spade king at trick one, or had West won the first diamond lead, South would have made his game easily. But declarer should not have had to rely on a defensive slip, since the contract could not have been defeated with proper play.

All South had to do was to lead the king of diamonds from dummy at trick two! While it is true that this play would, in effect, have wasted the queen, it would also have assured him of establishing the suit while there were still sufficient entries in dummy, regardless of how the opponents defended.