Contract Bridge

In most deals, declarer has a built-in advantage over the defenders because he sees his own hand and dummy’s and so can more easily formulate a plan of attack based on the strength or weakness of the combined holdings. This natural edge held by declarer can be quickly lost, however, if he neglects to press his advantage properly.

Consider this deal where West led the nine of hearts following the auction shown. Declarer played low from dummy without giving the matter much thought, and East won with the king. East then paused to take stock of the situation.

From his viewpoint, it seemed futile to continue hearts when South was known to hold the queen. Declarer would undoubtedly establish dummy’s diamonds as soon as possible, after which he would almost surely have at least nine tricks.

East therefore decided that his side’s only real hope lay in the club suit. So he switched to a low club at trick two, and declarer suddenly found himself in hot water. He ducked two clubs and won the third with the ace, but when he tested the diamonds and found them divided 3-1, he had to go down one. All told, he lost a heart, three clubs and a diamond.

East’s inspired defense notwithstanding, the outcome was entirely South’s fault. He was asking for trouble when he ducked West’s heart lead, and he got it.

Both the lead and the bidding placed the king of hearts in East’s hand, so it was not necessary to protect the queen by playing low from dummy. More importantly, ducking the heart would give the defense a chance to shift to clubs.

For this reason, South should have gone up with dummy’s ace at trick one and tackled diamonds immediately. This would have yielded 10 easy tricks. By ducking the first heart, declarer turned his natural advantage into a disadvantage.