Contract Bridge

One of the secrets of good declarer play is not to take the easy hands for granted. When you are declarer in what seems to be a safe contract, you should always ask yourself: “Is there anything that might jeopardize the contract, and, if so,

This type of thinking often makes the difference between success and failure. A “worrier” in bridge has a huge advantage over a player who assumes everything will be divided normally. All too often, the non-worrier neglects to protect against the unexpected.

Take this case where South is in six hearts and West leads a spade. Declarer ruffs in dummy and sees 13 easy tricks consisting of five hearts, six diamonds, the spade ruff in dummy and a club. So he starts to draw trumps by playing the A-K and discovers to his horror that he can no longer make the slam because of the 4-1 trump division. The best he can do now is to settle for down one.

But if South is a worrier, this does not occur. He notes at trick one that a 4-1 trump split would pose a real threat to the contract, and looks for a possible solution if that division should happen to exist.

This does not prove to be a difficult task. After ruffing the spade, he leads a trump from dummy and allows East’s nine to hold the trick! This safety measure proves to be effective against any return, and South finishes with 12 tricks.