Contract Bridge

There are times when it is better for a defender not to take a trick that he can win. The big challenge, of course, is to know when that’s the right thing to do.

Consider this case where South is in three notrump and West leads the spade four, won by East with the ace as declarer follows with the ten. East returns the eight, on which declarer plays the queen, and the question is whether West should take the trick. West’s choice is crucial, because if he wins the trick, declarer makes four notrump, while if he plays low, declarer goes down one.

How can West solve this problem without seeing the East or South hands? He has to try to reason out for himself exactly what is going on.

Fortunately, it is not difficult to diagnose the spade situation correctly. This is mainly because there is a specific convention that governs precisely which spade East should return at trick two, depending on his holding in the suit.

For example, if East started with the A-J-8, he would return the jack, not the eight. Similarly, holding A-8-7, East would return the eight, not the seven. This is in accordance with the standard practice of returning the second-highest card from a threecard suit if the highest card has already been played.

And what would East do if he started with four cards in the suit led by partner? In that case, East would return his original fourthbest card rather than the second-highest. Therefore, if East’s initial holding in the actual case were the A-J-8-7, he would return the seven.

By applying these principles, it becomes easy in the present case for West to deduce that declarer started with precisely the Q-J-10 and that East started with the A-87. (If East started with the doubleton A-8, declarer would not have played the ten on the first trick.) West therefore ducks the second spade, and when East later wins the king of clubs, his spade return sinks the contract.

Tomorrow: Improvisation.