Contract Bridge

This hand was played many years ago by all-time great Sidney Silodor. He was declarer in six hearts, and West led the ten of diamonds. It seemed highly unlikely that East had the king of diamonds, so South’s chief problem was to escape a trump loser.

Silodor solved the problem in unique fashion. He won the diamond lead with the ace, played a heart to the ace, returned the jack of hearts and finessed after West followed low. After the jack held, he cashed the king, ran six club tricks — discarding dummy’s remaining diamonds — and so made seven.

How did Silodor know he should finesse West for the heart queen? Why did he go against the odds, which favor playing for the queen to fall under the ace-king when holding nine cards in a suit? Well, there’s one tiny item we forgot to mention. On the ace of diamonds, Silodor had dropped his queen!

Silodor didn’t really know who had the queen of hearts, but his method of play was designed to make the slam whether East or West had it. Suppose, after he had dropped the queen of diamonds and played the trumps as he did, East had turned up with the queen of hearts. Silodor would have lost a trump trick, it’s true, but what would East have done next?

East almost surely would not have played the king of diamonds. He most likely would have assumed his partner had led from the 10-9-8 and that declarer’s queen was a singleton. He probably would have returned a spade to his partner’s hoped-for ace — unless he had the ace himself, in which case he might well have tried to cash it.

Had Silodor finessed the opening diamond lead and lost to East’s king, he might or might not have guessed the trump position later on, but the way he played the hand, he was an overwhelming favorite to make the slam.