Contract Bridge

There are usually two sides to any story, and this is certainly true in bridge, where things can be viewed from both an offensive and defensive perspective.

Consider the present case

where South is in four hearts and West leads the queen of diamonds, which holds. West continues with the three of diamonds to East’s king, and East leads the diamond ace, ruffed by declarer.

If South is familiar with elimination plays, he knows at this point that he’ll make the contract regardless of where the K-Q of clubs are located. Accordingly, he leads a spade to the ace, a trump to the queen, ruffs a spade, leads a trump to the ace and ruffs his last spade. He then leads a low club to his eight, ensuring the contract. West wins with the queen but must yield the game-going trick whatever he returns.

But that’s only one side of the story. Now let’s go back to trick three when East played the ace of diamonds. At that point, he was in position to know, from West’s fourth-best diamond lead at trick two, that declarer had no more diamonds. East should therefore have shifted to a club at trick three, hoping to find partner with either the A-Q , A-J-x, K-Q-x or K-J-x of the suit, in which case declarer would sooner or later lose two club tricks and go down one.

It is true that many players holding the East hand would, from force of habit, continue with the ace of diamonds at trick three and live to regret it. But situations like this -- where a defender mechanically follows the line of least resistance and does the wrong thing -arise all the time. That is why it is so often said that defense is by far the hardest part of the game.

Tomorrow: Looking to the

future.