Contract Bridge

Wherever you go in bridge circles, whether the caliber of the game is good, bad or indifferent, the one thing that stands out is that more points are lost on the easy hands than on the difficult ones.

For example, take this case where South was in four hearts and West led the king of clubs, on which East played the deuce. At trick two, West shifted to a low spade, hoping his partner had the queen.

Declarer played the king from dummy to encourage East to win with the ace (if he had it) and return a spade. But when the king held the trick, South led a spade to his queen and West’s ace. West then cashed his ace of clubs — the third trick for the defense — and shifted to a diamond at trick five.

Declarer won with the ace and led the queen of trump, on which West followed low. South was then faced with a crucial guess. It did not take him long to go up with the ace, catch the king and so make four hearts.

There is no doubt that when a declarer is faced with the trump combination shown here, he will do much better in the long run to finesse than play the ace from dummy.

But in the given circumstances, South had ample justification for abandoning the normal percentage play. He had seen West show up with the A-K of clubs and ace of spades on the first four tricks, and he also remembered that West had passed originally. It followed that West could not have the king of hearts, which would have given him an opening bid.

So South went up with the ace, hoping East’s king was singleton, and was appropriately rewarded for his effort.