Contract Bridge

While deception may be frowned upon in everyday life, it has a very definite place in the game of bridge. Indeed, a player who succeeds in pulling the wool over the eyes of an opponent is often roundly congratulated, even by his victim.

Consider this deal from a pairs tournament, which places a premium on getting the maximum out of every deal. South leaped to four hearts after East’s three-diamond opening, and West led his singleton diamond.

Declarer covered the ten with dummy’s jack, ruffed East’s king and drew four rounds of trumps, discarding a club and two diamonds from dummy. The queen of spades was then led, and West took the ace and returned a spade.

South quite properly finessed the nine, realizing that even if this lost to the jack, the contract was safe, since he could later return to dummy with a spade to discard a club on the fourth spade. This plan would have worked perfectly except for one thing: When the nine was played from dummy, East followed smoothly with the six!

This naturally convinced declarer that West had the jack of spades, giving him a chance to make two overtricks. So South next led the queen of diamonds from dummy, forcing East to cover with the ace and establishing dummy’s nine. After ruffing, South then led his last spade to dummy’s ten, planning to discard one club on the king of spades and another on the nine of diamonds.

One can only imagine declarer’s chagrin when East produced the jack of spades and returned the ten of clubs. South now had to lose two clubs plus the two spades already lost, so he finished down one.

After recovering his composure, South did the only thing one can do in these circumstances: He congratulated East wholeheartedly for his fine deceptive play, while secretly wishing he’d had the opportunity to do the very same thing himself.

Tomorrow: Distributional hand evaluation.