Contract Bridge

This deal occurred in the 1986 Cavendish Club Invitational, at the time regarded by many as the most prestigious pairs contest in the world. The declarer was Michael Rosenberg, who together with his partner, Matt Granovetter, finished first in the 36-pair field.

They were one of five pairs to reach a grand slam on the North-South cards, but were the only pair to make it without any assistance from the defense. By agreement, North’s five-spade response to four notrump showed two aces plus the queen of spades, after which South had no compunctions about bidding seven spades.

Rosenberg won the opening heart lead with dummy’s ace, crossed to the ace of clubs and led a spade to the ace. He now had several options open to him, but unerringly chose the winning line.

At trick four, he cashed the queen of spades and then played the king of clubs, discarding his heart loser. When the queen of clubs did not appear, he next played two high diamonds, leaving the missing ten of trump outstanding for the moment.

The advantage of playing diamonds while a trump was still missing can be seen in the actual deal. Had the third trump been drawn, declarer would have gone down due to the unlucky 5-1 division of the opposing diamonds.

But Rosenberg decided it could cost nothing to take out insurance against a bad diamond break — unlikely as it was — by testing diamonds first. Had both opponents followed to the A-K of diamonds, he would have drawn the missing trump and claimed the rest.

As it was, though, East showed out on the second diamond but was unable to ruff. Rosenberg then ruffed the nine of diamonds with dummy’s nine of trump, returned to his hand with a heart ruff and drew West’s last trump to bring in the grand slam.