Contract Bridge

This deal features pictureperfect defense by East-West, who collaborated beautifully to defeat a seemingly unassailable five-diamond contract.

North-South would have been much better off in three notrump, where nine top tricks were available, but they reached the diamond game as shown. West got the defense off to a good start by leading a trump. Had West instead led a spade — the suit his partner had bid — declarer would have had clear sailing via a straight crossruff, losing two club tricks at the end.

As it was, the opening diamond lead made it impossible for South to ruff two hearts in dummy, so he had to seek an alternative route to 11 tricks. He won the first diamond in his hand and immediately led the jack of clubs, losing the finesse to East’s queen.

East recognized that if he returned a second diamond, he could prevent declarer from ruffing any hearts in dummy, but he was concerned with an even more imminent threat — dummy’s clubs. If declarer established that suit while the ace of spades remained as an entry to dummy, he could eventually discard his losing hearts on the good clubs.

East therefore set his sights on dislodging dummy’s ace of spades before declarer could draw trump and establish the clubs. And to make sure that nothing went awry, East returned the spade king!

This proved to be just what the doctor ordered. No matter what declarer did from this point on, he could not avoid losing two more tricks, and he finished down one.

Note that if East had returned any card other than the king of spades at trick three, South would have had no trouble making the contract.