Contract Bridge

It is said that there’s no such thing as inventing a new play in bridge. And, taking into account the billions of hands that have been played through the years, this is probably true. Even so, every once in a while someone seems to come up with something that has not been seen before.

Consider this deal where West leads a heart against three notrump. Declarer ducks East’s jack of hearts and wins East’s king continuation with the ace. South now leads a diamond, and it does not matter how East-West elect to defend. The best they can do is to score two heart tricks and the A-K of diamonds to hold declarer to nine tricks.

This scenario seems altogether normal, and it appears that South must make the contract, come what may. However, three notrump can be defeated if East does something very unusual. All he has to do is to play the eight of hearts instead of the jack at trick one! This might look very peculiar, but it has a dramatic effect on the outcome, since South can no longer make the contract.

Declarer is forced to win the eight of hearts with the ten. Whenever he leads a diamond, West wins with the king and returns a heart.

South can take the ace of hearts whenever he pleases, but he cannot score more than eight tricks.

East’s play of the eight of hearts is not, strictly speaking, a brandnew play in bridge, since there are variations of it that arise under many different circumstances. But it is the right thing to do here, because East’s only real chance of stopping the contract is to find his partner with the king of diamonds.