Contract Bridge

The question of whether or not to draw trump immediately has no pat answer. The solution depends entirely on what declarer needs to do to eliminate his excess losers.

In general, if declarer has enough tricks in the side suits to assure his contract, trumps should be drawn at once. But if declarer plans to trump his losers, or if extracting the missing trumps will give the defense a leg up in the timing, it may be best to delay drawing them.

Today’s hand illustrates the type of thinking that determines declarer’s best course of action. South is in four hearts, and West leads a spade, taken by South with the ace. How should he proceed?

In the great majority of hands where declarer is missing the A- K of trump, his first step should be to eliminate the opposing trumps as quickly as possible. But that would be suicidal in the actual case. If South leads a trump at trick two, he is virtually certain to lose four tricks and go down one.

Let’s say East wins the first heart. He returns a second spade, establishing a spade trick for the defense. No matter how declarer continues from here, he must lose two trumps, a diamond and a spade.

South’s only real hope is to somehow avoid the spade loser. To do this, he must immediately establish an extra diamond trick in dummy. Accordingly, he should lead the queen of diamonds at trick two.

West does best to duck the first diamond, but he is fighting a losing battle. After taking the second diamond with the ace, he returns a spade to declarer’s king, but South is now in full control.

He leads the jack of clubs to dummy’s queen and deposits his losing spade on the king of diamonds. The trumps can then be drawn in comfort, and South finishes with 10 tricks.