Contract Bridge

Many situations arise during the play that strongly challenge the imagination of a top-notch defender. Take this case where West passed two extremely difficult tests successfully. He led a spade against three notrump, declarer winning East’s jack with the ace. South then played a low heart at trick two.

It may seem automatic for West to follow low at this point, in keeping with countless similar situations encountered previously. But West was a very fine player who was rarely caught napping.

He had already fully processed what had happened at trick one. The jack was obviously the highest spade East had, revealing not only that South had the A-K, but also the ten. (East would have played the ten from J-10.)

In addition, declarer’s heart play at trick two — totally ignoring dummy’s diamonds — was convincing evidence that the latter suit did not need to be established because it was already good.

Having made these inferential observations, West realized that if he ducked declarer’s heart lead at trick two, South would quickly dash home with nine tricks.

At the same time, viewed from an entirely different perspective, West saw there was a strong likelihood that his partner held the A-K of clubs! He drew this conclusion by recalling that South had passed originally, was known to have the A-K-10 of spades and by implication also held the queen of diamonds plus some heart values. He therefore could not have the ace or king of clubs.

So West rose with the heart ace at trick two and played the queen and another club to sink the contract. He correctly led the queen first rather than the three to forestall the possibility that East might cash the A-K of clubs and thereby block the suit.