Contract Bridge

It is a bridge fact of life that a defender can never afford to relax. The nature of the game is such that it demands continuous concentration on the matters at hand.

Take this case where an inattentive West might easily allow declarer to sneak home at three notrump. However, the actual West was fully alert at the critical moment and delivered two successive blows that sank the contract.

West started by leading a low spade. Declarer could have made the contract then and there by putting up the king, but he instead made the more normal play of following low from dummy. East won with the queen and returned the nine of clubs to dummy’s queen. Declarer crossed to the queen of diamonds and led the nine of spades toward dummy. The moment of truth for West was now at hand.

West had paid careful attention to this point and had come to several conclusions. First, he knew from East’s play of the queen of spades at trick one that declarer had the jack. Second, he knew from East’s “top- of- nothing” return of the club nine that declarer had the A-J-10 of that suit.

This in turn meant that if West followed low to the spade lead, or covered the nine with the ten, declarer would win with the king and score nine tricks — four diamonds, four clubs and a spade. So West put up the ace at trick four, but his task was not yet complete.

The next problem was to find a way to score three more tricks before South could regain the lead. This was possible only if East had at least the A- Q-x of hearts. But if West shifted to a low heart, declarer could simply play low from dummy to force East to win and thereby assure the contract.

So West made the highly unusual return of the jack of hearts, and declarer was undone. In practice he played low, and East scored the next two tricks with the A- Q for down one.