Same combination, but a different ruse

Bridge

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an 18thcentury philosopher, author and composer, wrote, “Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.”

In bridge, infinity is an overbid. But in this column a week ago, West had the king-jack-doubleton in clubs and shifted to the jack to mislead declarer about the real club position. Here is a variation on the same theme.

What happened in three no-trump after West led a spade, then East won the trick with his king and returned a spade to dummy’s ace?

This deal occurred many years ago and was originally written up by B.J. Becker. The declarer was John Rau, who won the 1930 Open Team Championship, which is now the Reisinger Board-a-Match Teams. Sitting East was Sidney Satenstein, a New York expert.

Opposite South’s one-no-trump opening bid, which showed 16-18 points, North, with no singleton or void and insufficient values to consider a slam, understandably raised to three no-trump. Please don’t write in to point out that six clubs by North would surely have made, and six clubs by South would probably have succeeded — except against a defense identical to the one about to be described.

South had seven top tricks: one spade, four hearts, one diamond and one club. Initially, declarer assumed that he needed the diamond finesse to work. But then he spotted a second chance. At trick three, he led a low club from the board ... and East played his king!

Suitably deceived, declarer won with his ace and returned a club to dummy’s 10. Imagine his shock when Satenstein produced the jack and led a spade for down one.