Contract Bridge

There are some deals where the whole does not seem to be composed of the sum of its parts. Today’s deal from the 1988 Spingold Teams provides a case in point.

South was Bart Bramley, who arrived at a shaky fourheart contract following the highly competitive auction shown. Bramley ducked the opening spade lead to East’s queen, whereupon East shifted to the diamond deuce.

Declarer took the queen with the ace and led a low heart to the queen, losing to West’s king. West returned a low diamond to the eight and nine, ruffed by South.

Bramley now led a trump to the ace, hoping the jack would appear. When it didn’t, he turned his attention to clubs, successfully finessing the jack. The ten of clubs was then covered by the king and ace as West discarded a diamond.

At this point, it seemed Bramley was certain to lose four tricks — a club to East’s eight, the jack of hearts, and the heart and spade tricks already lost. But Bramley proceeded to prove otherwise.

After taking the club ace, he led a spade to the ace and ruffed a diamond. He then ruffed the spade ten and led dummy’s last diamond.

By this time, 10 tricks had been played, and Bramley had won eight of them. East’s last three cards were the 8-7 of clubs and the jack of hearts, while South had the Q-3 of clubs and eight of hearts. No matter what East chose to do on the diamond lead from dummy, Bramley could not be prevented from scoring the queen of clubs and eight of hearts, and the game was home.

What happened to East’s two “sure” tricks at the end? Well, dear reader, we leave it to you to figure out how four tricks for the defense and 10 for the declarer can add up to 13.