Contract Bridge

This deal of effort is sometimes shows what required kind to find the best method of defense.

West leads the king of hearts, on which East signals encouragingly with the nine. West continues with the ace and another heart, won by East with the queen. The defenders have thus collected the first three tricks, but South makes the rest regardless of what East does next.

However, the contract can be defeated by a different defense. If West leads a low heart to the queen at trick two and East returns a heart to his partner’s ace, South is in trouble.

West returns his last heart, and whatever declarer does, he goes down. He may discard from dummy or ruff with the seven, but in either case, East ruffs with the jack, and West later scores a trump trick to sink the contract.

It is a difficult line of defense to find, but there are good grounds for West to defend in this fashion. First, West should realize -- since declarer surely has the ace of clubs for his opening bid -- that it is impossible for the defense to win any tricks in the minor suits.

Second, when East signals with the nine of hearts, West should reason that if the nine indicates a doubleton, the contract cannot be defeated by continuing with the ace and another heart for East to ruff. That would surely be the last trick for the defense.

West’s only real chance of stopping the contract, therefore, is to find East with the Q-9-x of hearts and either the queen or jack of trumps, and defend accordingly.

Tomorrow: Solution to a dilemma.