Contract Bridge

Many hands contain potential pitfalls for declarer. The difficult part is to spot them at the outset of play and then to take whatever steps may be necessary to deal with them should they happen to occur.

Here is a case where declarer overcame two such challenges. South is in four hearts, and West leads a club. Declarer wins, but what should he do next?

His first order of business is to count his losers. He sees he has no spade or club losers, and that he must lose a diamond, come what may. He can therefore afford to lose one or two trump tricks, but not three.

So, to maximize his chances, he cashes the ace of trump at trick two and then leads the deuce toward dummy’s 10-7. This guards against either defender having started with K-J- 9-x.

West can do no better than win with the jack — on which East shows out — and return the eight of diamonds. Again, declarer must play carefully. West is unlikely to have a singleton diamond; he is far more likely to have at least two cards in the suit. Accordingly, South ducks the diamond eight at trick four.

East wins with the nine and returns the king of diamonds. South takes dummy’s ace and plays the ten of trump, losing to West’s king, but the battle is now over. Whatever West returns, declarer wins and draws West’s last trump with the queen as soon as possible to make the contract.

Note that if declarer relies on an early heart finesse by leading a heart from dummy to his queen and then plays the ace of hearts as soon as he regains the lead, he loses three trump tricks and goes down one. Note also that if declarer wins West’s diamond shift with the ace at trick four, he also loses three trump tricks and goes down one against best defense. It’s a simple hand, really, but declarer must proceed cautiously.