Contract Bridge

There is no question that declarer has a natural advantage over the defenders because he sees all of his side’s assets while each defender can see only half of his side’s resources. Nevertheless, a thoughtful defender can give a good account of himself if he makes use of all the information available to him.

Take this case where North-South reached three notrump as shown and West led the ten of clubs. Declarer played low from dummy, and East’s first problem was to decide whether to take the ace. After careful thought, East took the trick and returned the queen of hearts! This was certainly an unusual play, but it rendered South helpless as the cards lay.

If declarer covered the queen with the king, East’s A-10-6 would become a tenace over dummy’s J-9 and later bring about defeat when West gained the lead with the diamond queen. And if South did not cover the queen, a low heart continuation by East would produce the same result.

Observe that any other sequence of plays by East to the first two tricks allows the contract to be made. The question, therefore, is, How can East tell that this defense will prove effective?

The answer is that he cannot know for sure, but that given the circumstances, his first two plays offered the only realistic hope for the defense. East could see a total of 22 points in his own hand and dummy, which, added to the 15 to 17 points presumably held by declarer, left West with at most two or three points.

If West had one or no points, there was no hope of stopping the contract. But if West had the queen or king of diamonds and declarer could not collect nine tricks without establishing that suit, the defense had a chance. Since a low heart return would not do the job if South had the K-x-x, East returned the queen and reaped a just reward soon afterward.