Contract Bridge

One way to improve your game is to ask yourself, after you’ve gone down in a contract, whether you could — and possibly should — have made the hand. This type of self-analysis can help to prevent the repetition of an equivalent error.

Take this case where South made a mistake in the play and lost the contract as a result. After ruffing the club lead, South drew trump in two rounds, then played a spade to the ten, losing to the jack.

East returned a diamond, and West took the jack with the queen. Back came a spade, dummy’s queen losing to the king. West then scored the ace of diamonds for down one.

Of course, South was unlucky. He took three finesses and lost them all. He would have succeeded if West had had the king or jack of spades, or if East had held the queen of diamonds. The odds against losing all three finesses were about 7 to 1.

It was only later that South realized he should have made four hearts despite the bad luck he ran into. He had missed a sure thing that did not depend on the lie of the cards. After drawing trump, he should have attacked diamonds, not spades. This would have guaranteed the contract against any adverse distribution.

The reason for playing diamonds first is to force out the ace and queen in order to eventually discard a spade from dummy on South’s last diamond. At worst, only one spade can be lost with this line of play.

In the actual deal, West takes the first diamond and shifts to a spade. East wins the queen with the king but cannot safely continue spades. Declarer ruffs East’s club return and leads a second diamond. West can take his remaining honor and continue with a spade, but South puts up dummy’s ace and later discards dummy’s remaining spade on his established diamond.

Once the opposing trumps are drawn, South is assured of 10 tricks regardless of where the missing diamond honors are located, provided he goes after that suit immediately.