Contract Bridge

One of the great things about bridge is that every once in a while, even if you’ve been playing a very long time, you see something you’ve never seen before. Take today’s deal, which cropped up in a local duplicate game.

At most tables, South wound up in two or three spades after East opened one club, West raised to two and North doubled. At those tables where North raised South’s two-spade response to three, it was critical that South find a way to avoid losing five tricks. Only one declarer succeeded.

The play was virtually the same at every table. Declarer won the opening club lead with dummy’s ace and played the king of diamonds. East won, cashed the king of clubs and led the jack of clubs to West’s queen. West then shifted to a heart, East taking the king with the ace and exiting with a diamond to South’s queen. Declarer thereupon led the queen of spades, hoping West had started with the K-x. West’s king was taken by the ace, but South later lost a spade to East’s ten for down one.

The declarers who failed to make nine tricks in spades missed a key inference available from the bidding. While East could certainly open one club on a three-card suit, West was hardly likely to raise clubs without four-card support.

Once East was credited with just three clubs, there were only three distributions he could have started with: 4-3-3-3, 3-4-3-3, or 4-4-2-3. East therefore could not have the low doubleton spade the unsuccessful declarers were hoping for.

Since the contract could not be made if East had the king of spades, South’s only legitimate chance for nine tricks was to play West for specifically the singleton king. Accordingly, the lone successful declarer led a low spade from his hand after taking the diamond queen and ended up with a top score for his efforts.