Contract Bridge

Fast reflexes are absolutely essential in most sports, as well as many other endeavors. However, bridge does not happen to be one of them.

This point is exemplified by the way South played today’s deal. He arrived at six spades in short order, received an opening heart lead and just as quickly won the trick with dummy’s king. The king and ace of spades then revealed that he had a spade loser.

Declarer now did the best he could by cashing the A-K of clubs and ace of hearts, ruffing the jack of hearts and then playing the A-K-Q of diamonds. West was then given his spade trick in the hope that he would be forced to yield a ruff-and-discard, but when he produced a club, the slam was down.

The failure to make the slam can be traced to South’s play to the first trick. Before impulsively putting up the king of hearts and then hoping for a favorable trump division, he should have given more thought to how he might avoid a club loser. He might then have realized that virtually nothing could be lost by finessing the jack of hearts at trick one.

If the jack holds, as it does in the actual deal, two clubs can later be discarded on the A-K of hearts, so declarer ends up losing only a spade trick.

Not quite as easy to see — and the aspect that South overlooked in his hasty play to the first trick — is what happens if the jack of hearts loses to the queen. In that case, declarer isn’t any worse off than he was when he started. With the A-K of hearts still in dummy to take care of his club loser, he can still hope to avoid a trump loser to make the slam.