Contract Bridge

A defender usually does not precisely know the combined assets he and his partner hold, while declarer can see exactly where his strengths and weaknesses lie.

To overcome this natural disadvantage, a defender should try to avail himself of every possible source of information. He always has the bidding to go on, as well as the plays already made by his partner and declarer. Often, he can draw crucial inferences from the clues that emerge.

Consider this deal where declarer won the jack-ofspades lead in dummy and finessed the jack of hearts. West won with the queen and then found the only return to defeat the contract.

Gauging the situation perfectly, West led the five of clubs! South won with the ace and, after cashing four heart tricks, finessed the queen of diamonds. East took the king and returned a spade, and West cashed two spades and a club to nip the contract by a trick. Had West led any other card at trick three, South would have gotten home safe and sound. The club lead looks suicidal, and yet it was a very sound play.

West could not be certain of the location of the ace of clubs, but he calculated that the club return was safe regardless of who had it.

He reasoned that if East had the ace, the club play was surely right, since it would allow East to return a spade, while if South had the ace, it was bound to be singleton! West drew this inference from the fact that South surely would not have attacked hearts at the outset rather than clubs had he held the A-x of clubs. Declarer’s failure to try to establish dummy’s clubs strongly indicated that the suit was not of much use to him, and West took full advantage of that knowledge.