Contract Bridge

In attempting to make his contract, declarer must sometimes play for a lie of the cards that is mathematically less likely than another because the normally favored lie is not possible in the actual circumstances.

Take this case where South reaches four spades as shown and West leads his doubleton diamond. East takes the A-K and returns a diamond, ruffed by West with the four. West then exits with a club, South taking East’s nine with the ace.

Declarer has lost the first three tricks and so must make the rest. This means avoiding a spade loser with the opponents still in possession of the K-J-7.

In isolation, the percentage play at this point would be to cash the ace, hoping the king was singleton in either opponent’s hand. This would be superior to leading the queen from dummy, which would win only if West, specifically, had the singleton jack.

But in the actual deal, declarer knows at this stage that neither opponent can hold the singleton king. With only 17 points in the EastWest hands combined, East must have the king for his opening one-notrump bid. Therefore, West cannot at this point hold the singleton king.

Furthermore, East cannot have the king singleton, since he would not have opened one notrump with only one spade in his hand.

These deductions leave declarer with only one feasible option — to play for West to have started with the doubleton jack of spades. Accordingly, at trick five he crosses to dummy with a heart and leads the spade queen, and East-West’s potential trump trick goes up in smoke.

Sometimes percentages must take a back seat to reality.