Contract Bridge

Declarer must occasionally be willing to risk losing a trick in a suit where he has no loser in order to try to achieve the more important goal of making his contract.

Consider this deal from a duplicate pair game. Most of the North-South pairs got to six clubs, but only one declarer made the slam.

The play started the same

way at each table, with East taking dummy’s queen of hearts with the ace and returning a heart to the king. Declarer then cashed the queen of clubs and led a club to the ace, on which West discarded a heart. Now, to get home safely, South had to avoid losing a trick to East’s J-9 of trumps.

At the tables where the contract failed, declarer continued by leading a diamond to the ace and ruffing a diamond. Then came a spade to the jack and a heart ruff, the ace of spades and a spade to dummy’s king.

Dummy now had three cards, all diamonds, while declarer had the spade queen and K-10 clubs. South was thus forced to ruff a diamond at trick 11 and had to concede a trump trick to East at the end.

The only successful declarer recognized very early that to overcome East’s J-9 of trumps, he would have to be leading from dummy at the 12th trick, and that this could be achieved only by risking the loss of a trick he didn’t have to lose.

So at trick five he led a diamond and finessed the queen! After this held, he cashed the ace, discarding a spade, then ruffed a diamond. The spade ten to the jack, a heart ruff and the A-Q of spades to the king came next.

Eleven tricks had been played, and South was exactly where he wanted to be -- in dummy at trick 12. East’s J-9 of trumps then succumbed to the K-10 and earned South a top score on the deal.