Contract Bridge

If a player is forced to guess in a difficult situation, he will sometimes guess right and sometimes guess wrong. For this reason, experienced players try to arrange their play so that they will be confronted by as few guesses as possible.

South unnecessarily subjected himself to a guess on this deal, and went down one in four spades when he eventually guessed wrong.

The defenders began by playing the K-A and another club, ruffed by South. Declarer then crossed to dummy with a heart and led a spade to the queen, losing to West’s king.

South won the heart return, led a diamond to the king and played a second spade. After East followed low, declarer agonized for a long time but finally decided to play the ace. Result — down one.

Although South’s line of play would have succeeded most of the time, he could — and should — have avoided the trump guess altogether. In fact, had he made the technically correct play, he would have finished with 11 tricks instead of nine!

South’s one and only aim from the outset should have been to avoid losing two trump tricks. To that end, he should have cashed the ace of spades at trick four, planning to cross to dummy next for a second spade lead toward his Q-10-8-6-2 unless one of the missing honors appeared on the ace.

This safety play ensures the contract against any 2-2 break, any 3-1 break where the singleton is an honor, and any 3-1 or 4-0 break where East holds the trump length. It fails only when West started with K-J-x or K-J-x-x of spades, in which case not even a doctor could help.

In the actual deal, cashing the ace catches West’s king, leaving a marked finesse against East’s jack for an overtrick.