Contract Bridge

Despite the uncertainties the defenders face during the play, they can nearly always achieve the best result possible with the cards they hold if they put their minds to it.

Take this case where South got to four spades as shown, and West led the club deuce. East cashed the A- K, catching declarer’s queen, and continued with a club. South ruffed and played the A- K and another trump, West taking the queen. Declarer won West’s diamond return and cashed dummy’s hearts, discarding a diamond to make four spades.

The contract would have failed, however, had East made the proper return of a diamond instead of a club at trick three. Declarer would then have lost a diamond trick, in addition to two clubs and a spade, and gone down one.

It may be argued that the diamond return by East at trick three, from a holding of K-J-7- 5, is much easier to make when you see all four hands instead of two, since South might have had the queen. But, even so, the diamond return is absolutely correct under the circumstances.

All that is needed to reach this conclusion is to assume that South, for his weak twobid, has a six- card trump suit in addition to the Q-x of clubs he has already shown up with. It follows that declarer has no more than five cards in the red suits, and, no matter how these are distributed, they will eventually be taken care of by dummy’s five high- card winners if declarer is allowed to proceed at his own pace.

Consequently, no harm can come from returning a diamond even if South has the queen and is certainly essential in nearly all cases where declarer does not have the queen. The club return, by contrast, cannot gain no matter what South’s hand is and so should be excluded from consideration.