Contract Bridge

One of the marks of a great player is that he occasionally brings in a contract that seems impossible to make. Consider this deal from the 1985 world team championship final between Austria and the United States.

North-South were manytimes world champions Bob Hamman and Bobby Wolff of the U.S. After a strong and artificial one-club opening by Hamman and a one-diamond response showing a fair hand, the Americans took six more rounds of bidding to reach six diamonds, a seemingly hopeless assignment. Even if diamonds and hearts divided favorably, Wolff appeared to have only 11 tricks -- five diamonds, four hearts and the two black aces.

But Wolff proceeded to demonstrate that this analysis left something to be desired. He won the opening trump lead with the ace, ruffed a spade, led a trump to the queen and ruffed a second spade. He then cashed the king of diamonds -- his last trump -- discarding a low club from dummy as both opponents followed.

Next came the K-Q of

hearts, and when the jack fell, declarer continued with the ace and ten. At this point, dummy held the A-Q-9 of spades and the ace of clubs, so Wolff simply played the ace and another spade. After East took the king, he had to return a club to the ace, and dummy’s queen of spades took the last trick to give South his slam.

Although the final contract

was unquestionably a very poor one, Wolff did what all successful players do in such situations -- he assumed a lie of the cards that would allow him to make his contract. He then proceeded on that assumption by ruffing two spades early in the play, and Dame Fortune took care of the rest.

Tomorrow: Look before you leap.