Contract Bridge

One of a defender’s primary responsibilities is to anticipate a problem his partner might encounter and try to prevent him from going wrong. West did exactly that in today’s deal, and thereby spared East the agony of being subjected to a very difficult guess.

The three-notrump contract reached by North-South was a shaky affair at best, and would have had no chance had West led a heart or a spade initially. But West, certain that South had the king of hearts for his notrump bids, elected to make a noncommittal club lead, after which the defense might easily have gone astray.

South played the king from dummy, hoping to induce a club return, but East won and shifted to the queen of hearts, covered by the king and ace. This brought West to the critical point of the play.

Had West simply returned

a heart, East would have taken the ten and jack, giving the defenders the first four tricks, but he would then have had to guess who had the missing nine of hearts. And if East had misguessed and returned a fourth heart, declarer would have taken the rest of the tricks.

After winning the ace of

hearts, though, West paused to analyze the situation. He didn’t know how good his partner’s hearts were, but he did know that he couldn’t contribute anything more of substance in that suit. He also couldn’t tell who held the missing high clubs or the king of spades.

To clarify the situation for his partner, West therefore cashed the ace of spades before returning a heart. East then happily collected the setting tricks with the J-10 of hearts and king of spades, after which he thanked his partner for having spared him a big headache.

Tomorrow: Better safe than sorry.