Contract Bridge

The great majority of bridge players have never played duplicate bridge, or even seen it played. Furthermore, most of them don’t realize that duplicate is a wonderful training ground for improving one’s game.

The chief reason for this

is that in rubber bridge, most mistakes tend to go by unnoticed, while in duplicate, one’s mistakes are brought sharply to the fore by comparing scores with those obtained by players at other tables who have held the very same cards.

Consider this deal where West leads a spade against three notrump. Declarer plays low from dummy, and East wins with the king. Back comes a heart, and South’s jack loses to the queen.

Another heart lead from West forces out the ace, and declarer must now tackle the diamonds. So he plays a diamond to the king and finesses on the way back, and goes down one when West takes the jack with the queen and returns a heart.

In most rubber-bridge

games, this might be chalked up to bad luck, but in duplicate, declarer would realize he had blundered after comparing his result with other declarers who had played the same hand and made the contract.

The key play occurs at trick one, when declarer should go up with the ace of spades. He then plays the king and another diamond, finessing the jack after East follows low, and thereby guarantees the contract.

When dummy comes down,

South can see nine virtually certain tricks -- a spade, four diamonds, a heart and three clubs -- and he should not jeopardize them by playing a low spade from dummy at trick one.

Tomorrow: Bidding quiz.