Contract Bridge

This remarkable deal cropped up during the final of the Senior Swiss Teams at the 2012 Summer North American Bridge Championships.

At the first table, North used a Texas Transfer to make his partner declarer at four spades. After West led a club and dummy was tabled, East was surprised that North had not at least explored the possibility of a slam and felt a big swing might be in the offing.

South no doubt thought he was in for an easy time of it, expecting to lose no more than the two missing aces. He won the club with dummy’s ace, cashed the heart king and led a club toward his hand. He was planning to win with the king, discard two diamonds from dummy on the A-Q of hearts and then another diamond on the queen of clubs before tackling the trump suit.

That was when the roof caved in. East ruffed the club lead at trick three and returned the queen of diamonds, hoping to find declarer with the king and his partner with the ace and jack.

South misguessed the diamond position by playing low, and East’s diamond continuation allowed West to score the A-J. West then led a third round of clubs, ruffed by declarer with dummy’s jack. South, who was already down one, now led a spade to the queen, losing to East’s ace, whereupon West returned another club. Regardless of what declarer chose to play from dummy, East could not be prevented from scoring a trick with his now-singleton ten of spades, so South finished down three!

At the other table, North-South did make an attempt to get to slam, stopping in five spades when North learned there were two aces missing. Here the defense was not quite as sharp, so declarer escaped for down three to match the result at the first table and gain a tie on the board.